On a quiet Wednesday afternoon in Jiuxianqiao, a neighbourhood just outside Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road, the streets were calm, with barely a car in sight. Inside a kerbside sales office, however, staff bustled about, serving desserts and drinks as clients streamed in, eager to place their bids on Oriental Courtyard, a new luxury apartment complex that is set to launch later this month.
The residential project, led by state-owned China State Construction Engineering Corporation, includes eight buildings with a total of 380 units ranging from 143 to 249 square metres, according to documents seen by the Post. The units are priced at an average of 125,000 yuan (US$17,687) per square metre – nearly three times the city’s average of 48,594 yuan.
Oriental Courtyard obtained its advanced sales permit – which allows developers to preregister interested buyers ahead of official project launches – on September 28, just days after Beijing unveiled its stimulus package aimed at reviving the property market. None of the 380 units are expected to be completed until August 2027, according to Zhou Yi, a sales representative at the office.
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“Over 400 groups of clients have already placed a bid, which means we’re oversubscribed. Some paid deposits of as much as 200,000 yuan,” Zhou told the Post. The deposit will be refunded to the buyer’s account within 30 days if they are unable to purchase a home, he added.
One of the main reasons that Oriental Courtyard is appealing is that a new project hasn’t launched in this prime area in a long time, making it a “rare and valuable” core asset, according to Zhou.
“But the more important thing is that people are regaining confidence after the country’s ‘missile-like’ stimulus package in September,” he noted.
Just one week before China went on a weeklong holiday break, authorities unleashed their most aggressive stimulus package since the Covid-19 pandemic – including cuts to mortgage rates and down payment requirements – signalling their resolve to end a housing market rout that has dragged the economy down over the past few years.
All four of China’s tier-one cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen – followed suit by easing restrictions for homebuyers. Beijing lowered the social insurance and personal income tax payment thresholds for non-residents to purchase homes in core residential areas, while Guangzhou removed all homebuying curbs. Smaller cities like Chengdu and Hangzhou also recently relaxed their policies.
These measures seem to have had an effect. China’s 50 largest cities reported a year-on-year increase of 65 per cent in new home transactions during the holiday period, with growth rates reaching 153 per cent in Beijing, 108 per cent in Guangzhou, and 261 per cent in Shenzhen, according to data from Beike Research Institute.
In China’s southern technology hub of Shenzhen, a property in the Longhua district developed by Shum Yip Group is set to launch 322 flats on Sunday. These units, priced from 5.85 million yuan to 11.09 million yuan after discounts – or 67,800 yuan and 80,000 yuan per square meters – have been fully subscribed, just days after a price list was released.
Another project in the city, located in the Baoan district, was also expected to offer 248 units for sale this Sunday.
“The sentiment among developers to launch new projects is picking up,” said Wei Kai, a sales director at Centaline Property Agency in Shenzhen. “They are speeding up to grasp the opportunities to sell the new projects.”
Some experts, however, are sceptical about the durability of the growth trend.
“This increase in new housing sales that we are seeing in tier-one cities is likely to be short-lived and is certainly not indicative of a property rebound,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China Center at the Conference Board, an international think tank. “Consumer confidence levels remain very weak, underpinned by deep-rooted structural imbalances that will take time to be addressed.”
“The property boom that China saw over the past decades is over,” he added. “What we can hope for is for a continued correction that ultimately stabilises the sector at a lower level in terms of its contribution to GDP growth and of its importance for Chinese households’ wealth.”
For now, business is still going well for Zhou Yi, the Beijing sales representative. He attended to nearly 15 groups of clients every day during the weeklong holiday, most of whom were families from nearby neighbourhoods seeking to “upgrade” their homes.
He expects to stay busy for a while.
“People keep coming in,” Zhou said he as he pulled out his phone to reply to a barrage of client messages over WeChat. “I’ve worked a lot. You can tell from my eye bags.”
Additional reporting by Yulu Ao
More from South China Morning Post:
- China property: Hangzhou and Chengdu ease purchase rules to spur housing transactions
- China’s home sales saw ‘golden week’ spurts. Are they enough to save the market?
- Golden week: China’s property market sales get boost from Beijing’s stimulus measures
- Banks may become collateral damage as China’s ‘big bang’ squeezes margins, degrades assets
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