The Chinese government’s launch of real-estate control policies in March has led to sizeable year-on-year plunges in urban home transaction volumes for 2017.
According to the “2017 December Residential Home Market Transaction Report” (2017年12月住宅市场成交报告) released by the Shanghai E-house Real Estate Research Institute on 4 January), in the month of December the new home transaction floorspace for 50 cities saw a year-on-year fall of 13%, for the 10th consecutive month of year-on-year declines.
For 2017 as a whole, the transaction floorspace for the 50 cities monitored by the report saw a year-on-year of 18%.
The Shanghai E-house report divides the 50 cities it monitors in a total of six regions, including the Beijing-Tianjin conurbation, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Central China, Western China and the north-east.
Out of the six regions only Western China saw a year-on-year rise in housing transaction floorspace in 2017, while Beijing-Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta all posted sizeable declines, led by the Chinese capital with a drop of 43.8%.
According the report a key reason for the sharp year-on-year decline was the flourishing housing market of 2016 which prompted the introduction of tight property controls last year that have effectively stymied speculative investment demand.
In December four mega-cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen saw their new commercial housing transaction floorspace rise by 24%, 18%, 26% and 28% respectively compared to the preceding month, while the on-year changes were -38%, -24%, -28% and 50%.
The total new commercial housing transaction floor space for the four mega cities was 2.45 million square metres in December, for an on-month increase of 23%, and a year-on-year decline of 25%.
