What Are China's Real Housing Numbers?

Summary: National real estate data recorded 1 billion square meters of finished construction in 2013, with 790 million square meters of residential property. According to Jiangsu province's data, finished construction was 480 million square meters in 2013, or 50% of the national figure. Thus like GDP, the provinces and the central government produce different numbers, but whereas GDP is at least within the ballpark, these numbers are extreme. Either the national government has extremely under counted or Jiangsu has extremely over counted.

The gap is the result of different statistical methods. National statistics are from the point of view of the real estate industry, while Jiangsu collects data from the point of view of construction. Since companies build housing for workers, villages build housing, people build their own small unattached homes, and none of it is done by developers, but rather by themselves, this means Jiangsu's numbers may be closer to reality. It is impossible to separate out these numbers in the statistics though, and reform is needed.

See this WSJ article for background on the reform: China to Establish System for Tracking Real Estate Ownership

A national property registry should be completed by 2018, but this will be long after the real estate situation is resolved.

China's housing data is fundamentally flawed; inventory may far exceed expectations 房地产基础数据信息缺失 楼市真实库存或远超预期

In the real estate field, data changes are not always consistent with the actual feelings of the different agencies, departments released data also tend to have differences. This situation not only affects the main market decisions will have an impact on policy formulation. China's real estate market, large-scale, regional industry, subdivision of the more obvious comparison, missing information, real estate data base, has been unable to reflect the market picture. Therefore, we must accelerate the establishment of a unified register of real estate platform, unified data release.

Inventory to determine the size of the property market has become an important basis for the risk, but on this issue, the difference data has emerged. Data show that in 2013 the national housing area of ​​10 million square meters, of which 790 million square meters of residential. According to data released by Statistics Bureau of Jiangsu Province, in 2013, construction enterprises in Jiangsu area of ​​480 million square meters of residential buildings completed. Only in Jiangsu province, was completed last year, the amount of residential accounts for more than half of the country!

The reason why this difference mainly lies in the different statistical. It is reported that the country's statistical standards, is based on the perspective of the real estate industry, and Jiangsu Province in setting statistical standards in selecting a more front-end construction. The idea that, because a lot of financing housing units, township from the building, and even small property room, not by the developer, the contractor directly by the builders, so after a statistical way closer to the market the truth.

If the above conclusion is true, reveals a striking property condition: the big stock market, far exceeding expectations. If the conclusion is not true, then the construction of Jiangsu Province, a large number of housing construction, how many belong to the scope of the construction industry? How many downstream products grouped into real estate? Such differences, the truth becomes the property market is so confusing.

Why data release will be a huge difference in caliber? On the one hand, lack of basic data platform, making the real estate data collection, classification is difficult to form a unified standard; on the other hand, the status quo, "Kowloon flood", but also result in different departments in the calculation and publication of the data, the doping of local interest considerations.

Difficult to see from the above cases, by different statistical standards, the way the output results of published data, the market tends to reflect the difference is huge. In China, the real estate market is still huge, and with the national economy has considerable relevance. Comprehensive information on whether or not the data, objective or not, authenticity or not, will affect the judgment of market players largely determine the real estate market and thus can achieve healthy development. From this perspective, improve data collection and dissemination system is necessary.

First, accelerate the improvement of basic data acquisition system. Real estate registration system, individual housing information system, the need to accelerate the improvement and put into use as soon as possible in order to gather more complete data base of information. Meanwhile, for the system to cover these areas should be promptly updated to change the nature of real estate, ownership relations, so as to reflect the latest, most real situation in the field.

Secondly, the calculation and publication of a unified data caliber. To change the statistics in "multi-long flood control" of the situation in the real estate data collection and calculation, we should set a reasonable statistical rules of science. When data is released, it should be unified release caliber. Even if the data come from different departments, but also to avoid the emergence of a different result in the same index.

Finally, refinement and dissemination of statistical data. Segments of the real estate industry has a strong existing market data indicators have been difficult to reflect the whole picture. In addition to current statistics caliber, including financing housing units occupied housing, rural housing and other information, as well as some affordable housing subdivision species, and the need for a separate statistical release, reflecting more the side of the market. Meanwhile, as a leading indicator to reflect changes in the market, second-hand housing , the rental market information, it is necessary to carry out more detailed statistics and publishing.