Pre-owned home transaction levels continued to perform poorly across 20 Chinese cities last month.
A new report released by the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute indicates that there were around 120,000 pre-owned home transactions in the 20 Chinese cities it monitors in April, for a month-on-month rise of 11% and a year-on-year decline of 18%.
The total number of pre-owned home transactions for January to April posted a decline of 28% compared to the same period year, for a narrowing of 3.8 percentage points compared to the decline for the first quarter.
Shanghai E-House researcher Wang Mengwen (王梦雯) said that while April saw the highest monthly transaction volume since June last year, the large month-on-month increase was partially due to the impact of a late Chinese New Year vacation in March.
According to Wang the market’s downward trend remains unchanged, further pointing out that transaction price curves tend to lag behind transaction volume curves.
Pre-owned home transaction volumes began to decline in April 2017, with the scope of decline subsequently seeing desultory expansion.
“Looking ahead, we expect transaction volumes to remain at low levels, and year-on-year price movements to continue to narrow,” said Wang.
“The year-on-year price curve for pre-owned homes can be expected to enter negative territory in the second half of the year.”
