Wednesday 25 March 2009

Property Market Getting Warmer

New home purchases are on the rise and analysts are optimistic about China’s property market.

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Guanyu said...

Property Market Getting Warmer

New home purchases are on the rise and analysts are optimistic about China’s property market.

Cheng Hua, Caijing
25 March 2009

Research institutions believe that China’s property market is getting warmer, as transaction volumes have continued to climb in many cities over the past weeks.

According to Changjiang Securities, new residence purchases in major Chinese cities saw a sharp rebound in the past several weeks. In northern China’s Bohai rim region, all cities witnessed continuous weekly growth of housing transactions, except for Jinan city in Shandong province. New home purchases in Beijing reached 373,800 square meters last week, increasing 6.3 percent from the previous week. Low-income home buying grew 68.5 percent to 23,900 square meters in Beijing.

In Tinjian, new home purchases reached 337,200 square meters last week, growing 15.8 percent from the previous week.

Housing sales also show signs of revival across the Yangtze River Delta region. Shanghai and Nanjing registered 28 percent and 9 percent monthly growth respectively.

In southern China’s Pearl River Delta region, Guangzhong saw a transaction rise while Shenzhen and Dongguan posted an 8 percent and 3 percent drop, respectively.

Six other major cities including Chongqing, Kunming, Fuzhou and Xi’an reported more than 20 percent monthly growth.

Industry research institutions say that China’s property market is slowly trending warmer.

A report issued by the Galaxy Securities said that the housing transaction rebound is fueled by various factors, including government policies, stabilization of the macro-economy, revival of market confidence and demand.

Pan Wei, a property analyst from Galaxy Securities, told Caijing that “the revival of property market will rely on the macroeconomic situation; the current situation supports the conclusion that the market is warming.”

Galaxy Securities said that since demand for new housing remains high and government preferential policies has begun to take effect, the housing market rebound is expected to continue with the coming sales season.

According to China International Capital Corp (CICC), home sales in China’s top and second tier cities had hit bottom last year and will revive this year. Sales in other cities are also expected to stabilize by the second quarter this year. Housing prices will hit bottom in the forth quarter, according to CICC.

But other institutions remain cautious on the market outlook. A report issued by Standard & Poor’s said that it still holds a pessimistic outlook on China’s property sector over the next ten months as the government policies that aim to alleviate capital pressures on developers would be unable to offset the impact of the global financial crisis.

However, Standard & Poor’s said that the industry outlook will be positive in the long term, motivated by economic growth and the urbanization progress. And more potential buyers will enter the market attracted by the price cuts.