China’s property sales remain static despite China’s central bank enacting policies to stimulate the market.
According to China Real Estate Information Corporation (CRIC), there is a consensus that the real estate sector is on a downward spiral and is truly heading for an era of negative growth. In January, the Chinese regime and the central bank introduced various policies to revive sales. Local provincial governments in China were doing everything they can to streamline the home loan application process. Many incentives were introduced to encourage more sales.
However, China’s real estate market did not show the expected recovery. According to statistics from the China Index Academy on 31 January, total sales of the top 100 real estate enterprises in January was 422.33 billion yuan (about USD 63 billion), down 31.7 per cent year-on-year, while equity sales in the top 100 real estate enterprises were 325.54 billion yuan (about USD 45.5 billion), down 35.2 per cent year-on-year.
On 2 February, CRIC announced the sales volume of real estate companies in January. According to the report, China’s real estate supply, demand, and transaction volume will not show any significant signs of recovery in the short term, and overall sales will remain low.
The report said that the scale of real estate sales in China bottomed out in 2022. The area of new constructions, real estate investment, as well as corporate investment enthusiasm also fell to the bottom. There is now a consensus that the industry is in decline and will face an era of negative growth, and the optimism level for 2023 is essentially nonexistent.
According to the report, Chinese real estate companies will have massive debt repayments coming in the first three quarters of 2023.
The Chinese Central Bank on February 3 released the “Report on the Investment of Loans by Financial Institutions in the Fourth Quarter of 2022,” which stated that the balance of personal home loans in China increased by only 1.2 per cent year-on-year at the end of 2022, a 10 percentage point drop from the end of 2021, NTD reported.
These statistics point towards more serious challenges facing China’s economy in the next few years since real estate constitutes around a quarter of China’s total GDP.