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Chinese property developers’ sales in the first two months of the year tumbled from a year ago amid weak market sentiment.
The top 100 property developers’ sales reached 476.2 billion yuan in the first two months of the year, slumping 51.6% from the same period last year, according to data released by the China Index Academy.
In breakdown, the average sales of the top ten developers reached 21.2 billion yuan each in the two-month period, sliding 47.7% year over year, while the average sales of the developers ranked 50th – 100th was 1.4 billion yuan each, plunging 57.6%, showed the data.
Separate data from real estate research firm CRIC showed that the top 100 property developers’ sales reached 420.9 billion yuan in the first two months, slumping by 48.8% from the same period in 2023, expanding by nearly 15 percentage points from the decline in January.
Compared to the the same period in 2021, the combined sales in January and February tumbled by 77%, according to CRIC.
In breakdown, new home sales in tier-one cities, measured by floor area, reached 680,000 square meters in February, slumping 66% from a year earlier and sliding 56% month on month, while that in tier-two and tier-three cities combined reached 4.24 million square meters, sliding 72% year over year and 43% from the previous month, showed the data.
As developers stepped up marketing efforts around the Spring Festival season, home viewings in some cities increased, but transactions remained muted due to wait-and-see attitude among homebuyrs, said Liu Shui, research director at China Index Academy.
The slumps in home sales were also partly attributable to the high base in the same period last year, when pent-up housing demand accumulated during the Covid outbreaks was released, he said.