Here comes the sales office
March 14, 2020, Nanjing, Jiangsu, UAV shot of high-rise buildings and city streets near Xinjiekou in Nanjing. China News Agency issued a photo of He Youbao
There is a lot of news about the word "grabbing" recently.
Some friends in the circle of friends are rushing to buy masks, and they can buy 10 at a time; provinces are robbing pigs, and some places have introduced a breeding pig to give them a cash reward of 2,000 yuan; facing the threat of the epidemic, foreigners are rushing to buy toilet paper and bread; and some People, they have begun to line up to wear a mask.
A few days ago, a luxury apartment project in Shenzhen was sold out on the opening day. According to media reports, this project has an average price of more than 40 million and has 17 villas, which were sold out in just a few seconds. In early March, the 70 commercial apartments launched by the project were also sold out quickly. At that time, "local tyrants" wore masks to subscribe, and the project was urgently restricted.
The world of local tyrants is difficult to understand, and queuing for houses may be just a case.
However, last weekend, many sales offices in Beijing also started to be lively. According to reports, projects including Changan Jiuli and Jinmao International Communities have begun to queue up for sales.
The property market, which has been halted for nearly two months, seems to be starting to move. Is the house going to be fired again?
The property market "fall" in February
The word slump has little to do with the property market. However, many core indicators of the real estate market in the first two months of this year are in line with this description.
Investment in real estate development: from the year-on-year increase of 9.9% in 2019, it fell down to a year-on-year decline of 16.3% from January to February 2020
Image source: National Bureau of Statistics official website
Floor space and sales of commercial housing: from positive growth and slight decline, both fell to a year-on-year decline of more than 35%.
Image source: National Bureau of Statistics official website
Funds in place for real estate companies: rose 7.6% from last year to 17.5%.
Image source: National Bureau of Statistics official website
House prices and land prices also fell.
In February of this year, only 21 of the 70 large and medium-sized cities, that is, one-third of the city's new commercial housing prices rose. Just a month ago, there were 47 cities with house prices rising sequentially.
The last time the house price rose so few cities was in May 2015, when the current round of the property market just started to rise. This means that in February, the number of cities with new home prices rose to a 57-month low.
The second-hand housing market has "slammed" even harder. Of the 70 cities in February, 48 fell in second-hand housing prices and only 12 rose in cities.
According to Yan Yuejin, research director of the Think Tank Center of the E-House Research Institute, the sales price index of second-hand housing in 70 cities rose -0.1% month-on-month in February, the first decline in 58 months.
The land market has also contracted significantly.
The land acquisition area of real estate development enterprises from January to February was 10.92 million square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 29.3%; the land transaction price was 44 billion yuan, a decrease of 36.2%.
Simple calculation. In the first two months, the average national land price was 4,029 yuan / square meter, a year-on-year decrease of 9.8%.
After a round of property market regulation since the end of 2016, the growth rate of house prices in major cities has continued to narrow, but most cities have maintained their upward trend, and the general price rise has not changed. The sharp adjustment of the property market in February under the influence of the epidemic may break this situation.
Of course, the decline in data on investment, sales, housing prices and land prices is mainly due to the market shutdown caused by the epidemic. These are short-term impacts. Will the real estate market continue to be depressed or will there be a V-shaped rebound?
This first depends on policy.
Will regulation be relaxed?
The central government's attitude towards the property market policy has been very clear: housing is not speculated; real estate is not used as a short-term means of stimulating the economy.
Mao Shengyong, director and spokesman of the National Bureau of Comprehensive Statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, reiterated on the 16th that the positioning of housing and housing has not changed. In recent years, the real estate market has been generally stable. In particular, the situation of stable land prices, stable expectations and stable house prices has taken shape. In addition, he emphasized again: "It is also clear not to use real estate as a short-term stimulus policy."
Prior to this, the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, the National Bureau of Statistics and other departments repeatedly emphasized the keynote of regulation such as housing and property speculation.
These all send a signal: "Do not live in the house" is not just talking. Localities can take measures according to the city, but large-scale and large-scale loosening of control is not allowed.
After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the real estate market was impacted, and a large number of support policies such as bail-out of real estate companies and reduction of defaults were released. But from the current point of view, some of the more intensive policies (such as involving the adjustment of the down payment ratio) or the unbundling policies that have caused public opinion fluctuations have either been withdrawn by local governments or have proven to be the case.
For example: Zhumadian City, Henan Province proposed to reduce the down payment ratio of the Provident Fund for the purchase of the first house from 30% to 20%. But shortly after, the local government was interviewed by the Henan provincial government and the policy was withdrawn.
Guangzhou's "cancellation of apartment purchase restrictions" also experienced a "one-day tour" of loosening policies, and the relevant content was deleted the day after the policy was introduced.
Net transfers of Huzhou Bank, ICBC Shaoxing Branch, and Construction Bank Shenzhen Branch, which lowered the down payment ratio, all denied any adjustments to the mortgage policy.
Hainan Province recently tightened the regulation against the trend and proposed the sale of commercial housing for the construction of new land. The existing housing sales system was implemented. The 26-year commercial housing pre-sale system was “off the shelf”.
There are various signs that the policy space for loosening the property market is not large.
But this does not mean that there is no driving force for a rebound in house prices.
Last week, an extremely rare situation emerged: stock markets in more than a dozen countries experienced a sharp meltdown, assets such as crude oil, bitcoin, and gold suffered panic selling, and the global financial market tsunami.
The Federal Reserve announced on the 15th that it would urgently cut interest rates by 1 percentage point to between 0% and 0.25%, and launched a $ 700 billion quantitative easing plan.
Since 2008, several rounds of QE in the United States superimposed on domestic real estate stimulus policies have been regarded as an important factor driving the rapid rise of the Chinese property market in the past few years. The reason behind this can be simply summarized as: liquidity is injected into real estate, which leads to further rise in house prices.
Zhang Hongwei, chief analyst of Tongce Group, believes that the excessively accommodative market on the capital side cannot be digested. With the easing of domestic monetary policy, the later market liquidity will inevitably seek channels for value appreciation and value preservation. At present, the return on real estate investment is still stable and higher than most other industries.
Therefore, after the US launches a new round of QE in 2020, China's housing prices may further rise due to abundant market liquidity.
When the sales office comes, will house prices rise?
Before the fiery online house sales speculated by major real estate companies, not many people actually bought the bill, but after the reopening of the sales office, it really attracted a large wave of house buyers wearing masks.
A regional head of a housing company in Shandong said that after the sales office he was responsible for reopening, there were a lot of visits, and many people visited the house with masks. The number of customer visits at the end of February has exceeded the peak of last year, and villa products in particular have attracted market attention.
In addition, Beijing, Nanjing, Shenzhen and other places have also exposed many sales offices to increase the flow of people, showing signs of recovery.
The second-hand housing market is also recovering. Xu Xiaole, chief market analyst of the Shell Research Institute, revealed that in the past two weeks, the volume of second-hand transactions in key 18 city chains has increased by 89.7% and 64% from the previous month, respectively. Compared with Xiaoyangchun in March of the same period last year, the second-hand transaction volume of chain homes in key 18 cities has recovered to more than 30% of the same period last year, and new listings have returned to about 60% of the same period last year. The above) has exceeded the level of the same period last year, and the accumulated demand in the previous period is relatively strong. With the recovery of offline activities, it is expected that the future transaction volume will increase.
However, he believes that the rapid recovery of the short-term market will not cause prices to rise sharply.
The current supply-demand relationship is still relatively modest. New home inventory is as high as 530 million square meters, and the rhythm of the second-hand market is still very slow. In 2019, the transaction cycle of housing in key cities is more than 100 days. The recovery of the market is the release of short-term cumulative demand, which is not enough to change the market's supply and demand comparison.
In the longer term, as the impact of the epidemic continues to decrease, the market may advance along the previous stable curve.
Pang Wuji