Will Real Estate Rage Return in 2019? Developers Slashing Home Prices Ahead of Mid-Autumn and National Day

With the credit window closing, developers are under more pressure to move inventory during Mid-Autumn Festival (September 13) promotions this coming weekend and in the upcoming Golden Week holiday. Prices are already falling as much as 10 percent and larger cuts could be coming depending on this coming weekend's holiday traffic.

iFeng: 房企扎堆促销 有楼盘每平方米降价近万元

Recently, Evergrande’s nationwide “Golden September and Silver 10” National Day purchase promotion activities were not a case. From the perspective of the Beijing area, a number of large and medium-sized developers have launched a variety of promotions. In Guangzhou and Wuhan, there are also frequent discounts for developers. Industry insiders pointed out that housing enterprises are pushing the push for traditional sales season, aiming to speed up the withdrawal of funds and ease the pressure on funds.

Wuhan is one of the strongest housing markets in China and Guangzhou is arguably the strongest of the tier-1 cities. Beijing is also seeing price cuts of approximately 10 percent.

Price reduction

A recent survey by China Securities Journal found that many large and medium-sized developers in Beijing have launched promotional activities with varying strengths. Among them, a high-end residential project of a leading house enterprise has a price reduction of nearly 10,000 yuan per square meter, and the total price has dropped by about 1.1 million yuan. The sales manager of the real estate introduced, "The externally quoted 75,000 yuan / square meter of hardcover room can be sold according to the actual situation of the customer's purchase of 68,000 yuan / square meter. The delivery standard is about 10,000 yuan per square meter, after the price reduction has been Close to the cost price." For the reason of the price cut, the manager bluntly said that the downturn was down, and he wanted to speed up the payment by lowering the price.

It's not only the lack of credit driving sales, but also a cooling housing market:

Zhuge Institute of Housing Research analyzed that the recent cold sales in the property market is the direct cause of developers to cut prices. In the context of increasing financing difficulties, the pressure on housing companies' funds has become more prominent. Some housing companies are taking advantage of the traditional "Golden September and Silver 10" sales season, and hope to quickly withdraw funds through the way of price cuts.

Companies are desperate to move fast and offering larger discounts for customers who can pay now:

Judging from the current situation, most of the property promotion activities launched are linked to the down payment account. The faster the payment, the greater the discount, but the discount is basically reduced by 30,000 to 100,000 yuan on the basis of the total house price. The situation of direct drop of one million yuan in Beijing is relatively rare. The above-mentioned cases belong to the promotion activities jointly launched by housing enterprises and intermediaries, and the activity period is short.

Home price declines are occurring in top-tier suburbs and all over the lower-tier cities.

In addition to the Beijing area, recent Guangzhou, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and other places have also reduced the price of houses. According to Zhuge's house statistics, the price reduction areas can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the suburbs of large and medium-sized cities, such as Tongzhou, Shunyi, Changping, Daxing in Beijing, and Fengxian in Shanghai. The second is the third- and fourth-tier cities, such as Huai'an, Huanggang, and Zhangjiagang. Due to the limited supply of land in the central city of the big city, the supply of new houses is concentrated in the suburbs, and the price reduction space is relatively large. The third- and fourth-tier cities were affected by the weakening of the shed and the peak of supply. The market was weak, and the volume and price of some areas fell.

Inventory ratios rose in August as sales slowed:

Behind the increase in price cuts is the decline in trading volume. According to a report released by the Yiju Real Estate Research Institute, in August, the transaction area of ​​newly-built commercial housing in 40 typical cities monitored decreased by 9% from the previous month and decreased by 3%. Among them, the transaction area of ​​the four first-tier cities decreased by 19% quarter-on-quarter and 16% year-on-year; the transaction area of ​​18 second-tier cities decreased by 10% quarter-on-quarter and 6% year-on-year; in the third- and fourth-tier cities, the transaction area decreased by 4% year-on-year and 17%.

On the supply side, the data from the Kerry Research Center showed that the supply-demand ratio of commercial housing in more than 70% of cities increased in August, and the inventory of nearly half of the key cities increased slightly, with the increase rate within 7%, and the inventory digest cycle was longer.

Shen Yu, a researcher at the Yiju Real Estate Research Institute, predicts that some housing companies will increase their efforts in the next few months due to financial pressure. It is expected that the price increase of the “Golden September and Silver 10” property market will increase. It is not ruled out that some of the previous home purchases will be released, and the property market may increase in a short period of time. However, the China Index Academy said that due to many factors such as tightening industry policies, rising mortgage interest rates, and overdraft demand, the real estate market has a strong wait-and-see attitude at this stage. The effect of the promotion and collection strategy is still not obvious, and the downward pressure on the market is still large. The possibility of growth is small.

The central bank announced a RRR cut, which is expected to release about 900 billion yuan in long-term funds. The relevant person in charge of the central bank said that the RRR cut was not flooded, and the stable monetary policy orientation has not changed. The Kerry Research Center said that the RRR cut is limited to the property market. Although the overall credit environment tends to be loose, the real estate credit policy will continue to be moderately tightened under the regulatory tone of “staying and not speculating”.

Guoxin Securities Research Report pointed out that the relevant departments have introduced various measures to prevent funds from violating the regulations into the real estate sector in an all-round way. The current round of RRR cuts has limited impact on the real estate market. It is worth noting that before the RRR cut, various policies to tighten real estate financing were introduced, especially during the two-month period of July and August. Therefore, it is difficult for funds to flow to the real estate industry on a large scale, and housing prices and land prices are not likely to rise sharply. Some market participants also believe that there is still a marginal benefit to the impact of the RRR cut on the property market. The willingness of banks to place credit after the available funds have been enriched will increase, and some of the previous bank mortgages will run out and the lending rate may slow down.