Residential Land Sales at New All-Time High

Residential land sales in the top 100 cities are at a new all-time high through May 19.
iFeng: 年内住宅用地成交近万亿元创新高 三线城市罕见下滑
Sougou: During the year, residential land transactions reached a record high of nearly 1 trillion yuan, with rare decline in third-tier cities.

In terms of transactions, the total number of residential buildings in 100 large and medium-sized cities reached 1,442, with an area of 76.369 million square meters, down 6.3% and 7.59% respectively from the same period last year. Despite the decline in the number and area of transactions, the cumulative transaction amount increased by 9.52% year on year to 961.737 billion yuan, a record high for the same period.

It is worth noting that although the accumulated transaction amount rose 9.52% against the trend, the increase was the lowest since 2016. Under the keynote of "no speculation in housing", "stable land price, stable house price and stable expectation", the policy effect of city policy is gradually showing.

Prime land is being exhausted in major cities, but land premiums are making up the difference:

At the same time, the soil auction premium rate also showed a bottom-up trend. In March, the average premium rate for residential land in 300 cities was 23.6%, up 2.6 percentage points year on year and 13 percentage points month on month. The premium rate rose further in April.

"The competition in the real estate industry is getting more and more fierce. Under the industry pattern of the strong becoming stronger and the weak becoming weaker, some large-scale housing enterprises are strongly willing to short-term replenish their positions. However, the relatively loose financing environment since the beginning of the year has eased the pressure on housing enterprises' funds to some extent, which has also created conditions for them to actively seize land." Yan Yuejin, research director of the think tank center of Yi Ju Research Institute, told the reporter of national business daily, "After the Spring Festival, the real estate market showed signs of partial recovery and led to better market expectations, which also led to the housing enterprises' concentrated land grabbing in some cities."

Prior land price surges have been a leading indicator for home prices.