Residents across the U.S. state of Florida are grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, which made landfall along the state's west-central coast on Wednesday night.
As of Friday, the storm has claimed 16 lives.
As communities look to recover from the impact of the hurricane, they face the daunting task of sifting through the remnants of their homes while grappling with difficult decisions about their future.
The community of Point Pines in Englewood faces the possibility of being torn down. Many of the homes, built in the 1950s, have just endured two consecutive hurricanes—Milton and Helene.
"From what I understand, they're going around and marking all the houses as inhabitable right now. So (we're) just trying to clean up. I was trying to clean up the street so we can get the cars down the street without getting flat tires. The inside of our house is pretty much trashed. On the back side, we had a wall blow out. Just like everybody else, just coming day by day and starting cleaning up," said David Weers, a Point Pines resident.
Another Point Pines resident, Ronda Stutz, chose not to evacuate for Hurricane Helene two weeks ago thanks to the keys in Florida, which is a coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida. But she was forced to leave this time due to Milton.
"Yeah, because this neighborhood didn't expect surge at all last time. There were no surge warnings here. It was only the (Florida) Keys over here. And so we stayed. We've been through hurricanes. This house was built in 1953. We have never taken on water in this neighborhood. And we decided when we saw the water coming in, we called 911. They said they were coming, but they were rescuing a lot of people, there are 65 houses in here. Nobody left for Helene. So they were rescuing as many as they could," she said.
For the Stutz family, Hurricane Milton proved to be far more devastating than for some of their neighbors. The container pod holding furniture salvaged after Hurricane Helene was flooded, leaving them unable to even access it. This time, the storm surge was higher, and the winds were significantly more powerful.
"These are the cut marks where we had to remove the drywall from Hurricane Helene. We moved a foot above, so our highest line here was 33 inches. We haven't done water measurements in here yet, but we have to. He found one yesterday. It was 55. So that's the new water mark from Milton, and we didn't have this mud in Helene," she said
Despite going through two devastating hurricanes, she said she still struggles to decide whether to leave, as they love their neighbors and the close-knit community.
"I just told him we can't think that far ahead yet. I mean, it's hard because our neighbors are wonderful. This is the most wonderful community I've ever lived in. And it's really hard to make those decisions right now. We don't know, we can't decide yet. It won't be anytime soon. We'll be living here for sure. But we don't know," she said.
Florida residents struggle to rebuild their lives after devastating hurricane
Florida residents struggle to rebuild their lives after devastating hurricane
Florida residents struggle to rebuild their lives after devastating hurricane
China's real estate market has seen an upswing this month as homebuyer confidence recovers following a series of stimulus measures announced by central government departments and many local governments to boost the healthy development of the country's pillar industry.
Many cities announced that they would further optimize their local property policies, taking measures such as reducing down payment rates for both first-home and second-home purchases, lowering the purchase threshold for nonlocal buyers and adjusting existing home mortgage rates.
In east China, the coastal city of Weihai, Shandong Province and Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province both set a consistent minimum down payment ratio for loans on both first and second homes, slashing the minimum down payment for second-home loans from the previous 25 percent to 15 percent.
Tianjin Municipality's Binhai High-tech Industrial Development Area recently announced that eligible employees working in Beijing no longer need to meet pre-existing conditions to purchase a home and gain residence permits.
These measures are expected to drive China's consumer spending and bolster economic growth this year, said Yu Xiaofen, dean of the China Academy of Housing and Real Estate at Zhejiang University of Technology.
"Overall, market participants are shifting towards a more positive outlook and the effects of these policies can be expected. During this year's National Day holiday, over 100 cities, including Wuhan, Changsha, and Nanjing, organized various promotional activities such as an autumn seasonal promotion, housing expos and shows. We believe that these activities play a very positive role in boosting the interest of homebuyers, increasing willingness to purchase, cutting home buying costs, and restoring confidence in the market," said the scholar.
Thanks to these favorable policies, China's residential real estate market witnessed buoyant sentiment across major cities.
In Shenzhen, the populous tech hub of south China's Guangdong Province, a three-day real estate fair kicked off on Friday and attracted crowds of local residents and even homebuyers from surrounding cities. The fair followed the city's lifting of key restrictions on home purchases and lowering of the minimum down payment for first homes to 15 percent of the purchase price, and to 20 percent for second homes.
"Due to good policies and promotional activities, I made a special trip here," said a homebuyer from Zhuhai, a city just south of Guangzhou.
From October 1 to 7, a total of 1,841 new commercial houses were sold in the city, skyrocketing more than 660 percent from a year ago, according to statistics from the Housing and Construction Bureau of Shenzhen.
Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong Province, scrapped all home-buying restrictions on September 30, making it the first time a city its size has lifted home purchasing requirements. Guangzhou has witnessed a substantial rise in the transaction volume for both new and pre-owned homes over the past weeks.
Wang Huan, director of a new housing project in the city, reported that their sales volume since the last day of September has exceeded 120 units, or three times the original sales target.
"After the purchase restrictions were fully lifted, the location of our project changed from a restricted purchase area to a non-restricted purchase area. So, our sales have shown significant growth since the first day of the policy implementation," he said.
Data showed that from October 1 to 7, new home sales in Guangzhou stood at 5,855 units, higher than the total sales volume of the entire August and September this year.
Meanwhile, the enthusiasm in the city's pre-owned housing market is also on the rise. Huang Anfu, the store manager of a real estate agency, reported that the number of property viewings and inquiries at his store has doubled compared to normal since the lifting of purchase restrictions.
China's housing market picks up amid bundle of stimulus measures
