Sunac, China’s fourth-largest property developer, recorded highest selling price among ‘Big Five’ companies last year

Sunac China, the country’s fourth-largest property developer by sales, recorded the highest average selling price – 15,200 yuan (US$2,264.9) per square metre – among China’s “Big Five” developers last year.

According to data by JPMorgan, Sunac, which focuses mainly on large cities, beat China Vanke, the country’s second-largest developer by sales, by a whisker. The average selling price at Vanke was 15,032 yuan per square metre. Country Garden, China’s biggest developer by sales, reported an average sales price of 9,266 yuan per square metre, the cheapest among the Big Five.

Among 22 major developers, it was China Jinmao Holdings that fetched the highest average selling price of 25,537 yuan per square metre last year. The company focuses on luxury residential homes in larger cities.

The average selling prices reflected two groups within the sector. “One is present in small cities or counties, [such as the likes of] Country Garden, while the other is sharpening its focus on major cities with larger economic output, [such as the likes of] Sunac and Vanke,” said Yan Yuejin, research director at E-House China R&D Institute.

More than 80 per cent of the 48.3 million sq metres of land Sunac bought last year was located in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, such as Beijing and neighbouring Tianjin. About 70 per cent of the 86.5 million sq metres that Country Garden acquired in 2018 is located in smaller cities such as Huizhou in Guangdong province.

Beijing unlikely to loosen property price controls, says Sun Hongbin, boss of construction giant Sunac China

Yeung Kwok Keung, Country Garden’s chairman, said during its results briefing last month the future of China’s property sector lay where thousands of migrant workers will settle down – in its smaller cities and counties.