China's housing market has quietly wiped out trillions in family wealth, and the pain is being spread to ordinary households instead of banks — bad for Chinese families and, indirectly, for American retirement savers.

• China's property market has lost around $18 trillion in housing wealth since 2021, with no single crash day to mark it.
• Home prices have fallen for 17 straight quarters and are back to 2006 levels, erasing years of middle-class gains.
• The losses were pushed onto families, who keep paying full mortgages on homes worth far less, while banks were told they can delay marking bad loans as losses for years.
• Property is about 70% of a typical Chinese family's wealth, so this hits households far harder than the 2008 crash hit Americans.
• Some of the debt landed in global funds held by BlackRock, Fidelity, and others, so American retirement accounts quietly took a hit too.

Outlook: Expect a slow grind lower for years, with China dumping cheap exports abroad and stoking new trade fights that reach American workers.