Bricks and Mortar | BNP report pinpoints mainland's healthiest property markets
Study ranking the mainland's good, bad and least attractive cities reveals southern comforts
Whether you're an institutional or individual investor, picking one out of more than 600 mainland cities to park your capital in is never an easy way to hunt treasure.
A recent study by BNP Paribas that analysed the housing market across the mainland's top 100 cities may provide a guide for those interested in betting on home prices soaring again after the loosening of restrictions on home purchases.
The 100 cities in the study recorded total transaction volume of 660 million square metres last year, representing 57 per cent of total mainland transaction volume of 1.16 billion square metres.
The results of the study, included in a report titled "In search of growth in China's top 100 cities" by Lee Wee Liat, BNP Paribas' Hong Kong-based head of Asia property research, indicated that 57 of the cities, from Sanya, Hainan, in the south to Harbin, Heilongjiang, in the north, had unhealthy supply-demand dynamics - facing either oversupply or demand conditions that were likely to deteriorate.
It drew up a list of "good" versus "bad" cities based on five indicators: the number of years of land oversupply, number of years of housing units undersold or oversold, degree of housing imbalance, population/floor space square metre sold and total population to hukou (registered) population ratio.
In that contest, Shenzhen outperformed the other 99 cities to be crowned healthiest city.