Market Confidence Recovers as Popularity Warms Up During National Day Holiday

Title: Popularity Warms Up, Market Confidence Partially Restored—Investigations into the Real Estate Markets in Multiple Cities during the National Day Holiday

During the National Day holiday, reporters visited Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chongqing, and other places and found that under the impetus of multiple favorable policies before the holiday, the popularity in the real estate markets of many places began to warm up. The number of visitors to many real estate projects increased, transaction activity improved, and market confidence was partially restored.

Popularity Begins to Warm Up: A Notable Increase in Visitors to Some Projects

The real estate market welcomed a long-awaited resurgence in popularity during the just-concluded National Day holiday.

At the Yuefu in Yuexiu Tianhe in Guangzhou, the reporter saw a bustling sales office, with almost every salesperson having multiple groups of customers to attend to, and the coffee machine in the sales center had reached its limit on the number of cups dispensed, forcing it to shut down.

Before the National Day holiday, the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen adjusted policies and measures such as housing purchase restrictions. More than ten provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government), including Chongqing, Sichuan, Guangdong, Hubei, and Yunnan, issued provincial-level policy documents to promote the healthy development of the real estate market. Over 50 cities, including Wuhan, Nanchang, Hefei, and Guangyuan, introduced policies to optimize their local real estate markets.

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On the afternoon of October 7th, around 4 o'clock, the reporter visited the Poly Guanghe Yuecheng project located outside the outer ring of Shanghai. The sales office was packed to capacity.

The project usually has 70 to 80 visitor groups and 5 to 6 transactions on weekends; during the National Day holiday, the daily visitor count exceeded 100 groups, and daily transactions exceeded 10 units. The project's marketing head said, "After the new policy was introduced, the most significant change was the return of confidence among homebuyers. In the first five days, we mainly closed deals with customers we had accumulated before; in the last two days, new visitor transactions accounted for half. Some customers came in the morning and decided by evening. The new policy has accelerated the decision-making of homebuyers."

While the first-tier cities are heating up, the real estate markets in second and third-tier cities have also seen a thaw.

On the afternoon of October 1st, the "Chongqing Quality Real Estate Projects National Day Exhibition and Sales Fair" was held on the Guanyin Bridge Pedestrian Street in Jiangbei District, attracting many citizens to inquire and understand.During this year's National Day holiday, several real estate projects in Chongqing increased their promotional efforts, offering an exclusive National Day discount of 1% in addition to an extra 1% discount for those participating in the Chongqing Autumn Housing Fair Group Buying Festival.

During the National Day period, the "Chongqing Quality Real Estate Projects National Day Exhibition and Sales" was held at the Guanyin Bridge Pedestrian Street in Jiangbei District. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhou Kai.

Transactions gradually become active: Some cities even doubled their growth

Through interviews, it was learned that during this National Day holiday, many regions in the real estate market not only attracted a lot of attention but also made a significant profit.

According to information from the Shenzhen Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, from October 1st to 7th, Shenzhen sold 1,841 new commercial residential units, totaling 191,800 square meters, with a subscription volume that increased by 664.1% compared to the same period last year; in terms of second-hand housing, the city's leading intermediary institutions had a total of 24,620 visits and 1,314 transactions, with an average daily value that increased by 22% and 339% respectively compared to the 2023 National Day holiday.

Data from Beike showed that from October 1st to October 7th, Guangzhou's new house subscriptions exceeded 3,000 units, more than double the number from the same period last year. From October 1st to 6th, Zhuhai's new house subscriptions were 265 units, more than 10 times the growth compared to September 1st to 6th, and a 139% increase compared to the same period last year.

It's not just Guangzhou and Shenzhen; the sales of commercial housing in the central and western regions also showed varying degrees of growth.

According to statistics from the Hubei Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, from October 1st to 7th, the province's new commercial housing sales area was 676,000 square meters, a year-on-year increase of 43.1%, and a month-on-month increase of 150.1%.

Data from the Chongqing Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission showed that from October 1st to 7th, the online contract transaction area of commercial housing in the central urban area of Chongqing was 159,300 square meters, a year-on-year increase of 55.7%; the transaction amount was 1.604 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.1%. Many project sales managers reported that during the National Day holiday, the transaction conversion rate of the real estate projects significantly increased.

A person in charge of Poly Development introduced that from October 1st to 7th, the cumulative transaction amount of Poly Development's real estate projects nationwide exceeded 26 billion yuan, an increase of more than 40% compared to the same period in 2023. On the first day of the National Day, Guangzhou Poly Tianrui achieved 9 transactions, with one out of every 10 visiting customers making a purchase.The responsible person of the real estate agency Le You Jia in Shenzhen introduced that from September 30th to October 6th, the transaction volume of new houses in Shenzhen stores increased by 979% compared with the same period last year, and the transaction conversion rate increased from 2% to 12%, which means that out of 100 customers who visited new houses, 12 customers made transactions.

Confidence has been restored: allowing policy effects to be more sufficient and sustainable.

Many homebuyers said that a stable policy expectation is an important reason for them to "no longer hesitate" and choose to buy houses.

Since September, various places have introduced policies and measures to promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market. Especially on September 29th, a package of real estate financial measures announced by the financial management department was implemented, including batch adjustment of existing mortgage interest rates, optimization of the minimum down payment ratio for personal housing loans, improvement of the pricing mechanism for commercial personal housing loan interest rates, extension of the term of some real estate financial policies, and optimization of the requirements for re-lending related to affordable housing, all of which have brought real financial support to the industry development.

The reporter learned that some areas still have new policies "on the way". The person in charge of the Hubei Provincial Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department introduced that on the basis of the ten measures to promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market that have been introduced, the province is studying and formulating further policies and measures to promote the market to stop falling and stabilize, guiding various cities and states to formulate policies according to the city, and optimize real estate policies.

Under the positive actions of the competent departments and the industry itself, the "price war" and "involution" phenomena in the real estate market of many cities before have also changed, and some homebuyers no longer worry about the "endless fall" of housing prices.

On September 30th, the China Real Estate Association issued an initiative for the "Hundred Cities and Thousand Enterprises Commodity Housing Promotion Activity", advocating "reasonable sales prices, never arbitrarily raising prices to disturb the market, nor excessively reducing prices for vicious competition, and being a promoter of market stabilization and a maintainer of market stability".

Recently, several city projects under Poly Development have announced the "Price Protection Plan", and if the discount for online signing and sales in the later stage is lower than the existing discount of the buyer,退房 can be done without reason.

"I have my own needs, and the government and developers have given a 'reassuring pill', so I decided not to wait any longer." said Mr. Chen, a citizen of Guangzhou who bought a house during the National Day.

Li Yujia, the chief researcher of the Housing Policy Research Center of the Guangdong Provincial Urban Planning Institute, said that as the short-term demand is concentrated in the market, the subsequent strength of the real estate market will be very critical."First, policies must not be halted, and it is possible to further reduce the transaction costs of second-hand houses; second, the inventory in many cities is still at a high level, and it is necessary to innovate ideas to reduce inventory and promote a balance in the supply and demand relationship," said Li Yujia.