China’s September property market package fails to have dramatic effect on buyer confidence, fuelling hopes for more easing

Poor market sentiment may prompt Chinese authorities to roll out more stimulus policies, experts say

Weak house sales numbers follow action by central government last month to reduce down payments for millions of homebuyers across China

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China’s September property measures fail to lift buyer confidence significantly. Photo: Bloomberg

Daniel Renin ShanghaiandYulu Aoin Hong Kong

Published: 9:30am, 9 Oct 2023

Last month’s package of relief measures from Beijing to bolster the beleaguered property market has not yet had a major impact on homebuyer confidence, with weak sales data and further house price declines expected.

The poor market sentiment may prompt Chinese authorities to roll out more stimulus policies, experts said, in a bigger effort to jump-start home transactions as a means of combating a wider economic malaise.

The country’s top 100 developers raked in home sales of 484.5 billion yuan (US$67.3 billion) in September, down 24 per cent year on year, according to data compiled by the China Real Estate Index System (CREIS). However, the number was up 24.8 per cent from August.

The sales numbers follow significant action by the central government to lower mortgage rates and to reduce down payments for millions of homebuyers across the mainland in early September.

“We think these easing measures may help underpin market sentiment, especially in high-tier cities. High frequency data shows a modest improvement in property sales in major cities in September,” UBS said in a research report on Tuesday. “China has been accelerating property policy easing and we expect more easing measures to come in the next few months.”

For the first nine months of this year, the country’s 100 biggest developers reported sales of 4.85 trillion yuan, down 10.3 per cent from the same period in 2022, the CREIS data showed.