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New home sales plunge in volume, value
By Cherry Cao |
April 14, 2012, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SALES of new homes in China recorded double-digit declines in both volume and value in the first quarter as government rein-in measures continued.
By volume, excluding government-funded affordable housing, sales fell 15.5 percent year on year to 133.87 million square meters across the country between January and March, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.
By value, they fell 17.5 percent year on year to 709.9 billion yuan (US$112.7 billion).
Property development investment in China increased 23.5% to 1.09 trillion yuan in the January to March period from a year earlier, the bureau said.
Investment in residential development rose 19 percent year on year to 744.3 billion yuan, decelerating from a growth of 23.2 percent in the first two months of the year.
Builders, meanwhile, broke ground on 294.27 million square meters of new houses in China during the period, down 5.2 percent from the same period in 2011.
Sun Binyi, of China Real Estate Appraisal, said: "What we can infer from those figures is that over the next six to 12 months, new homes available for sale across the country may drop quite notably. But at the same time, the home-purchase restrictions, which are now implemented in about 40 cities across the country, have curbed market demand severely and therefore led to a surge in new home inventory."
New homes ready for sale totaled 193.5 million square meters in China as of March, an increase of 47.4 percent from a year earlier. However, the seemingly abundant supply at present could be misleading because the demand for homes has never abated and will be triggered as soon as the curb is lifted, Sun said.
"The demand is always there though many people have been prohibited from buying additional homes right now," said Sun. "In my personal belief, the home-purchase restrictions could be possibly loosened, at least to some extent, as early as the third or fourth quarter of this year in some cities because local governments around the country still remain highly dependent on income from land sales."
In Shanghai, for instance, land sales totaled 6.82 billion yuan in the first three months, a drop of 80 percent from the same period in 2011 and 79 percent less than in last year's fourth quarter, according to real estate website Soufun.com data.
By volume, excluding government-funded affordable housing, sales fell 15.5 percent year on year to 133.87 million square meters across the country between January and March, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.
By value, they fell 17.5 percent year on year to 709.9 billion yuan (US$112.7 billion).
Property development investment in China increased 23.5% to 1.09 trillion yuan in the January to March period from a year earlier, the bureau said.
Investment in residential development rose 19 percent year on year to 744.3 billion yuan, decelerating from a growth of 23.2 percent in the first two months of the year.
Builders, meanwhile, broke ground on 294.27 million square meters of new houses in China during the period, down 5.2 percent from the same period in 2011.
Sun Binyi, of China Real Estate Appraisal, said: "What we can infer from those figures is that over the next six to 12 months, new homes available for sale across the country may drop quite notably. But at the same time, the home-purchase restrictions, which are now implemented in about 40 cities across the country, have curbed market demand severely and therefore led to a surge in new home inventory."
New homes ready for sale totaled 193.5 million square meters in China as of March, an increase of 47.4 percent from a year earlier. However, the seemingly abundant supply at present could be misleading because the demand for homes has never abated and will be triggered as soon as the curb is lifted, Sun said.
"The demand is always there though many people have been prohibited from buying additional homes right now," said Sun. "In my personal belief, the home-purchase restrictions could be possibly loosened, at least to some extent, as early as the third or fourth quarter of this year in some cities because local governments around the country still remain highly dependent on income from land sales."
In Shanghai, for instance, land sales totaled 6.82 billion yuan in the first three months, a drop of 80 percent from the same period in 2011 and 79 percent less than in last year's fourth quarter, according to real estate website Soufun.com data.
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