Chinese real estate sales breached record highs in terms of floorspace and value in 2018 despite the launch of widespread controls on local property markets at the municipal government level since the start of 2017.
On 21 January the National Bureau of Statistics released the “2018 January to December National Real Estate Development Investment and Sales Report” (2018年1~12月全国房地产开发投资和销售情况), which points to nation-wide real estate development investment of 12.0264 trillion in 2018, for YoY growth of 9.5%.
China’s commercial housing sales floor space and sales amount in 2018 were 1.71654 billion square metres and 14.9973 trillion yuan, for YoY increases of 1.3% and 12.2% respectively.
NBS data indicates that China’s national commercial housing sales floor space was 1.28495 billion square metres in 2015 for a sales sum of 8.7281 trillion yuan, while in 2016 sales rose to 1.57349 billion square metres and 11.7627 trillion yuan, and in 2017 they hit 1.69408 billion square metres and 13.3701 trillion yuan.
“National commercial housing sales have once again breached a historic record, and single month sales in December also breached a historic record” said Zhang Dawei (张大伟), chief analyst with Centaline Property, to state-owned media.
“The peak period for shanty town renovations and other policies in second and third-tier cities is still continuing…looking at the national market an upward rise is still the main theme despite ongoing divergent trends.
“The vigour of control policies is strong in first and third-tier cities, but the number of cities with rising (prices) remains quite numerous.”
