China’s housing sales continued to slide in December, underscoring the challenges of reversing the property market amid the heightened epidemic.
According to Bloomberg News, preliminary data released by CR Real Estate Research showed that in December, the top 100 real estate companies achieved a sales turnover of 677.5 billion yuan (RMB, the same below, 131.352 billion Singapore dollars), a year-on-year decrease of 30.8%. November was down 25.5%.
Prior to this, decision-makers have successively introduced measures to rescue the real estate market, focusing on relaxing financing restrictions on real estate companies. But those efforts were offset by a surge in COVID-19 infections.
Chen Wenjing, deputy director of research at the Middle Finger Research Institute, said on Thursday that since the peak of the epidemic has not yet passed and the macroeconomic recovery is relatively slow, it will take time for home buyers’ income expectations and home ownership confidence to recover. “We expect the sales market to stabilize at the fastest or in the second quarter.”
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He previously said that the real estate industry is the backbone of the Chinese economy, and new measures are being considered to try to improve the industry’s balance sheet and guide market expectations and confidence to pick up.