A new report points to a drop in pre-owned home transactions across ten major Chinese cities in the first half of 2018 following the tightening of real estate market controls by municipal governments around the country.
The “2018 First Half 10 City Pre-owned Housing Market Report” (2018年上半年10城二手房市场报告) released by the Shanghai E-house Research Institute indicates that there were approximately 343,000 pre-owned home transactions in the ten major cities monitored in the first half of 2018, for a year-on-year decline of 20%.
The ten cities included Beijing, Chengdu, Jinhua, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Wuxi and Xiamen.
According to Shanghai E-house researcher Wang Mengwen (王梦雯), while the transaction volume for the first half of 2018 marks a slight increase compared to the second half of 2017, it still remains within the vicinity of the average for the past six years, as well as markedly beneath the peak last seen in 2016, in a sign that the market is still on the decline.
