(Mid-Year Economic Observation) Will the transaction recovery "step on the accelerator" Will the property market be unexpected this year?
China News Agency, Beijing, June 23 Question: The recovery of transactions "stepping on the accelerator" Will the property market be unexpected this year?
China News Agency reporter Pang Wuji
More than half of 2020 is coming, and the negative impact of the New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic on China's economic activities is gradually fading. The property market and the auto market are the first to usher in a strong recovery. Will the rapid rebound in transactions, the continued recovery of housing prices, and the rapid emergence of the Chinese housing market out of the haze of the epidemic will stage an unexpected rise this year?
Data map: real estate. China News Agency reporter Zhang Binshe
Resuscitation "stepping on the accelerator"
In recent months, various places such as "daylight" disks and "tens of thousands of people shaking numbers" have repeatedly reported the hot selling of real estate. The second-hand housing sector has also exposed news that the school district's housing transactions have increased and house prices have risen.
A few days ago, a real estate in Shenzhen promoted the sale of 394 suites. A total of nearly 9,000 people participated in sincere registration. During the same period, another project in Shenzhen revealed that more than 1,000 people were robbing 5 suites. At the beginning of June, a project in Hangzhou launched 959 suites, attracting nearly 60,000 people to register for the number. In the first four months of this year, Chengdu, a western city, has seen six “ten thousand people shake” real estate.
According to statistics from the China Index Research Institute, in May, China's 50 major cities' commercial housing transactions achieved their first positive year-on-year year-on-year growth rate, an increase of approximately 20%.
At the same time as transactions rebounded, house prices in some places also picked up. Official data shows that among the 70 large and medium-sized cities in May, the price of new homes rose in 57 cities, a record high of nearly 10 months. The four "first-tier cities" have a rare unified footsteps, both new and second-hand housing prices have risen across the board. In Beijing, Shenzhen and other places, there has also been a wave of “school district housing fever”, which has driven up transactions in the second-hand housing market.
Official data show that in May, the scale of China's real estate development investment has returned to a high of nearly two years, and the land market boom continued to rebound. Yang Kewei, deputy general manager of CR Research, said that this means that the current real estate industry has basically returned to normal levels.
Soaring? Not available
Despite the rapid recovery, many experts pointed out that China's housing prices do not have the basis for a surge.
First, the concentrated release of the backlog of demand is an important reason for the rapid recovery of this property market. Once the demand is fully released, it is difficult for property market transactions to continue to rise.
Second, under the downward pressure of the economy, residents' immediate income and future income expectations have both declined. In addition, China’s household debt level has been at a historical high, and housing prices lack the momentum to continue rising. According to the central bank report, the leverage ratio of China's household sector was 60.4% at the end of 2018.
Tan Xiaofen, deputy director of the International Finance Research Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics, pointed out that after the international financial crisis, the leverage of Chinese residents was mainly added to housing assets, the solvency of the residents’ asset structure was weak, and there was not much room for leverage.
Third, the tone of the housing market regulation of "no housing, no speculation" has not changed.
In recent months, at least 11 cities including Guangzhou, Jinan, and Baoji have experienced rapid withdrawal after the introduction of regulatory policies. Industry insiders pointed out that this shows that local easing policies will be stopped once they "step on the line." This year, under the special background of the epidemic situation, the government work report again mentions "no housing, no speculation". Many departments such as the Ministry of Finance, the Bureau of Statistics, and the Central Bank also intensively reiterated their voices and reiterated their need to stick to the "no housing, no speculation" positioning. Prior to this, Shenzhen and Shanghai successively carried out actions to strictly investigate the situation of operating loan funds entering the real estate market in disguise.
The property market entered the "platform period"
After two months of recovery, the repair of demand for house purchases has entered a "platform period", and the fluctuations have significantly weakened. This has already been demonstrated in the second-hand housing market in many first- and second-tier cities.
According to data provided by the Shell Research Institute, the new supply and demand data in the second-hand housing market in the third week of June all decreased.
In the new supply side, in the third week of June, the number of new homes in 18 key cities in Chain Home decreased by 12% month-on-month, and the number of new homes in 17 of 18 cities decreased sequentially. On the demand side, the number of customers in 18 cities has decreased for five consecutive weeks, a decrease of 15.8% month-on-month. In the 18 cities, the average inventory level in the city increased by 1.8% year-on-year in June last year, and the contradiction between supply and demand in the market tended to ease. Xu Xiaole, chief market analyst at Shell Research Institute, said this means that the market will naturally fall in the near future.
Another important phenomenon that has recently emerged is the continued decline in rents. According to the recently released data from the Housing Big Data Project Team of the Academy of Economics and Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in May 2020, all housing rents in first- and second-tier cities except Xiamen fell. Rents in Wuhan, Nantong and Shenzhen are at the top.
Zou Linhua, the leader of the big data project team of the Institute of Financial and Strategic Research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that the rent level is an important barometer for the urban economy. The rental market situation is an important fundamental aspect of the commercial housing market. If the housing rent level in first- and second-tier cities continues to decline, the housing sales market will turn cold in the second half of the year. (Finish)