Securities Times reporter Mao Kexin
Recently, local property market rescue policies have been implemented one after another, and the market is concerned about whether this round of loosening can boost the property market.
Judging from the sales data of real estate companies in May, the month-on-month data has stopped falling and rebounded, showing a significant improvement, but the year-on-year performance is still bleak. The monthly and cumulative declines are still expanding. At present, it is difficult to say that the market has bottomed out.
This round of loosening policies is characterized by intensive frequency and gradual increase in intensity, and even touches on core policies such as purchase restrictions, loan restrictions, and sales restrictions, and gradually extends to high-energy-level cities.
However, the industry expects that there is still a certain time lag in the effect of the policy, and it is hoped that there will be a recovery signal in the second half of the year, among which the first- and second-tier cities will take the lead in recovering.
At present, the overall recovery of the property market has not yet come, causing housing companies to be cautious in acquiring land, and the land market also remains cold.
The sales of real estate companies stopped falling and fell bleak year-on-year
There was a hint of warmth in the sales of real estate companies in May, which temporarily stopped the trend of consecutive month-on-month declines in the previous months, but the year-on-year situation was still not optimistic, and most real estate companies were still far from their annual sales targets.
According to CRIC’s data, the top 100 real estate companies achieved a sales volume of 454.67 billion yuan in May, a month-on-month increase of 5.6%, a significant improvement from the 16% month-on-month decline in April; but the monthly performance decreased by 59.4% year-on-year, and the top 5 The monthly cumulative performance scale decreased by 52.3% year-on-year, and the decline was further expanded compared with the previous month.
The large-scale real estate companies that have disclosed sales bulletins show similar characteristics.
Country Garden's May sales amounted to 28.71 billion yuan, an increase of 26.81% month-on-month, ending the trend of continuous decline in the first four months of this year, but it was still nearly halved compared with the same period last year.
Vanke's May sales amounted to 30.76 billion yuan, basically the same as the previous month's 30.86 billion yuan, down 46.56% year-on-year.
The threshold for sales ranking has also dropped sharply.
The threshold for cumulative sales of TOP50 in the first five months dropped from 22.7 billion yuan in the same period last year to 10.9 billion yuan this year; the threshold for TOP100 dropped from 8.3 billion yuan to 3.72 billion yuan.
Only Country Garden, Vanke, and Poly Development were the only three real estate companies whose cumulative sales exceeded 100 billion in the first five months, with equity sales of 150.08 billion yuan, 108.77 billion yuan and 106.62 billion yuan respectively.
According to the data of the Middle Finger Research Institute, the number of real estate companies in the top camp has decreased the most.
There are only 3 camps with more than 100 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12; the first camp (50 billion to 100 billion) and the second camp (30 billion to 50 billion) housing companies are 9 and 12 respectively, a year-on-year decrease of 9; There are 15 real estate companies in the third camp (20 billion to 30 billion), a year-on-year decrease of 2, which is basically stable.
Due to the uncertain industry outlook, most housing companies chose not to disclose their sales targets at the beginning of the year, or voluntarily lowered their targets.
Even so, among the listed real estate companies that publicly disclosed their performance targets, the completion of the targets in the first five months was still lower than expected, almost all lower than the same period last year.
Country Garden's target completion rate is relatively high. Compared with the annual target of 455 billion yuan, the performance of the first five months of 150.08 billion yuan is 33%, but it is still significantly lower than the 39.8% in the same period last year.
In addition, most real estate companies have less than 30% of their targets, such as Yuexiu Real Estate, Midea Real Estate, and Longfor Group, which are 28%, 22.8%, and 20.7% respectively.
"The sales data for May has not yet been fully released, and some developers may have a slight improvement month-on-month, which will bring some recovery of market confidence to a certain extent, but real estate sales are seasonally strong and are easily affected by the epidemic and have large fluctuations. It is too early to determine whether the industry's prosperity has recovered. In terms of housing prices, according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics from January to April, there is no obvious sign of recovery or bottoming. "Shen Jiachao, director of corporate research at Fitch Ratings, was interviewed by a reporter from Securities Times. express.
There is still a time lag for the policy to take effect
Recently, there have been frequent actions to unwind the property market.
According to CRIC's statistics, as of May 24, 134 cities across the country have issued a total of 223 property market control policies, which can be regarded as the most intensive period of relaxation policies in recent years, and the frequency of control policies shows a monthly increase. .
The content of the policy involves relaxation of purchase restrictions, loan restrictions, sales restrictions and provident fund loans, and is mainly concentrated in third- and fourth-tier cities.
However, judging from the sales of real estate companies, the loosening of the property market has not yet fully exerted its effect.
A salesperson in the southern region of a leading real estate company told a reporter from Securities Times · e Company that he could feel the market is picking up slightly, but to a limited extent. "For example, Huizhou has also introduced provident fund down payment, 2.5% down payment, lower interest rates, and cancellation of key areas. Purchasing restrictions and other policies, but boosting the property market requires a combination of factors, Huizhou’s environment still relies on Shenzhen spillover, so it will take time to restore market confidence.”
"The strength of the recovery has not yet met expectations." Yang Kewei, deputy general manager of the Kerui Research Center, said that, for example, from the situation in Zhengzhou, where the policy was first introduced, the stimulus effect of the policy is rapidly diminishing, so home buyers are still in the wait-and-see stage. If there are no substantial measures to stabilize expectations, we will wait and see further.
Generally speaking, the next situation still needs more observation, but the situation in June and July will probably not be worse than that in April and May.
This round of loosening began on March 1 this year when Zhengzhou relaxed restrictions on purchases and loans, a move that is symbolic in the industry.
A real estate industry analyst told a reporter from Securities Times · e company that since the proposal of "housing, not speculating," in 2016, the "three restrictions" of purchase restrictions, sales restrictions, and loan restrictions have become the core policies to restrict the demand side, except for the promotion by Heze at the end of 2018. In addition to the monetization of shed reform and the cancellation of sales restrictions, other cities are difficult to shake the "three restrictions", and Zhengzhou took the lead in breaking through the restrictions, which also attracted many subsequent cities to follow.
At present, many cities have touched the relaxation of the "three restrictions" core control policies, and the city's energy level has also been continuously improved, gradually spreading to first- and second-tier cities.
For example, popular cities such as Chengdu, Changsha, Hangzhou, and Haikou have successively joined the ranks of property market loosening.
The first- and second-tier cities have the strongest demand, and the intensity of their loosening measures has attracted much attention.
"For the needs of curbing the rapid rise in housing prices and controlling the rapid growth of the population in first-tier cities, it is unlikely that there will be a large-scale loosening policy, and more likely to be limited loosening around the introduction of talents. It is impossible to predict when the effect of the policy will be reflected. More depends on the economic recovery and home buyers' expectations for stable housing prices." Shen Jiachao said.
It is worth mentioning that the news of "cancelling the purchase restriction on second-hand housing" was reported in Nanjing not long ago, but it was stopped on the same day, and there are still many places where there are no clear documents for loosening the policy.
Shen Jiachao said that most of the loosening policies are local policies, and the lack of clear documents and the phenomenon of "one-day tours" means that local governments are testing the market response and the boundaries acceptable to their superiors, because the central government's "policy based on the city" guidance has not been implemented. There are clear qualitative and quantitative indicators.
The loosening of the boundary must not violate the bottom line of the central government on "housing, not speculating."
The industry will hope to invest in the second half of this year.
A number of people related to real estate companies told Securities Times e company reporters that the current industry environment has not fundamentally improved, and it will take time for the market to rebound.
A TOP10 housing company source said that internal executives expect the market to bottom out and rebound in the second half of the year.
Crane Research predicts that June will be an important node to verify the market quality of each city and set the tone for the market in the second half of the year.
In June and the third quarter, large-scale real estate companies also need to tighten the supply of goods as much as possible, and at the same time actively market to increase the level of sales.
The above analysts also said that there will be a time lag between the introduction of the policy and the recovery of the market, and as the market demand is gradually consumed, the time lag will become longer and longer. "For example, when the property market was stimulated in 2008, the policy time lag was only 3 months. But by the time of the stimulus round in 2014, it will take more than two years of continuous stimulus to really spread to third- and fourth-tier cities. In the current round, first- and second-tier cities must be the first to recover, but the pace of third- and fourth-tier cities will be very slow. "
"The more fundamental difference is that real estate is no longer used as a means to stimulate the economy, and 'housing, not speculating' is still the policy tone," said the analyst.
Shen Jiachao predicts that if there will be no more large-scale epidemics nationwide in the future, and the economy will gradually stabilize, the year-on-year decline in industry sales will gradually narrow in the second half of the year.
Sales of new commercial housing by major developers (non-statistical bureau) fell by about 50% year-on-year from January to May. If the aforementioned conditions are met, Fitch expects the year-on-year change to recover to a decline of about 25%-30%.
Real estate companies tend to be cautious in acquiring land
The sluggish sales also made real estate companies more cautious about investing in land. Some real estate companies in danger have been unable to invest, and the land market is still in a tepid state.
According to CRIC data, the investment of TOP50 sales companies in May dropped to the second lowest this year, only higher than that in January, with a year-on-year and month-on-month decrease of 95% and 70% respectively.
Companies with relatively high investment willingness are still state-owned and central enterprises such as China Overseas Land and Development, C&D Real Estate, and China Resources Land, while private enterprises are almost invisible in the land market.
In the first five months of this year, Vanke, China Resources Land, China Overseas Real Estate, Binjiang Group, Greentown China and C&D Real Estate were among the real estate companies with newly added land valued at more than 50 billion yuan.
Among them, C&D Real Estate acquired nearly 6 billion yuan in land auctions in Xiamen and Fuzhou in May, becoming the real estate company with the highest amount of newly acquired land from January to May.
Some of the insurance companies are subject to financial pressure and have no chance to acquire land.
Comparing the sales ranking and the land acquisition ranking, it can be found that large-scale real estate companies such as Sunac China, China Evergrande, Greenland Holdings, Shimao Group, Xincheng Holdings, and Sunshine City did not appear in the top 100 list of newly added goods.
As of the end of May, the threshold for the top 100 new value-added goods was 3.15 billion yuan, up 18% month-on-month, but down 60% year-on-year.
At the same time, the land-to-sales ratio of the top 100 real estate companies dropped significantly.
According to CRIC data, in the first five months of this year, the overall land-to-sales ratio of the top 100 real estate companies was only 0.15, of which nearly 80% of the housing companies had a land-to-sales ratio lower than 0.2, and nearly 60% of corporate investment was stagnant.
Under normal circumstances, the land acquisition ratio is between 0.30 and 0.45, and a lower ratio means that land acquisition tends to be conservative.
Overall, the land market in May showed a situation where both volume and price fell.
The transaction volume of commercial land in 300 cities across the country continued to be low. The total transactional construction area in May was only 66.06 million square meters, down 15.6% month-on-month, and the year-on-year decline expanded to more than 60%. Compared with the previous year, the transaction unit price dropped to 3,255 yuan per square meter, down 32% and 19% year-on-year and month-on-month respectively.