Standing at the beginning of 2022, looking back at what has happened in real estate in the past year, I have to say that 2021 is destined to be an extraordinary year. In the words of the media, since the second half of 2021, real estate has encountered an unprecedented "cold winter": not only have investment speculators spent more than half a year in the ordeal, and there have been many losers; developers have deeply felt the great power of regulation - bankruptcy, negative sales growth, financing restrictions, layoffs, liquidity risk and other 5 keywords, which well explain the situation faced by developers in 2021.
However, for thousands of home buyers, the biggest impression of real estate in 2021 is actually "price reduction". According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, since July 2021, the number of cities with new and second-hand houses in key 70 cities across the country has increased for "5 consecutive years", of which the number of cities where new houses have fallen has increased from 16 in July to 59 in November, and the number of cities where second-hand houses have fallen has increased from 26 to 64. Especially in October 2021, the price of second-hand houses in the key 70 cities fell by more than 91%. This is a scene that has not appeared since the "98 years of housing reform" real estate officially entered the market.
In our view, the data of 70 cities in the country is not comprehensive enough. According to the data of the National Housing Price Quotation Network, in December 2021, 174 of the 316 cities in the country saw the decline in the price of second-hand houses, accounting for 55%, setting a record for the most decline in second-hand houses since 2000. Among them, the first-tier city of Shenzhen has the largest decline in second-hand housing, with December 2021 falling by 19.04% compared with 2020.
It is worth mentioning that since June 2021, the average price of residential sales in the country has "fallen for 6 consecutive years", from 11030 yuan / flat at the highest point to 9749 yuan / flat in October, down 1281 yuan / flat, a drop of up to 11.6%. In this regard, some experts bluntly ridiculed that buyers finally realized the desire of "the cheaper the house is"- the same is to buy a 100-square-meter house, which is purchased in December than in June, saving at least 128,000 yuan.
If we look closely, we will find an even stranger phenomenon: of the 174 cities that fell in second-hand housing in December 2021, 148 were northern cities, accounting for 85%. In addition, on January 5, the "100 Cities Price Index Report" released by the China Finger Research Institute also confirmed this fact: in December 2021, there were 71 cities in which the price of second-hand houses fell in the 100 cities, of which 59 were northern cities, accounting for 83%. Based on this, real estate expert Liu Bo bluntly said that the housing prices in northern cities are almost "all-round decline", this data is really "hot-eyed", but to a certain extent, it also reflects the reality of the huge gap between northern and southern cities.
Are house prices in northern cities really generally "reducing prices"? The answer is yes, we can see the clues in the rise and fall of house prices in large cities compared with December 2020: Beijing fell 1.41%, Shijiazhuang fell 0.36%, Qingdao fell 1.87%, Tianjin fell 1.91%, Langfang fell 6.44%, Shenyang fell 1.93%, Tangshan fell 7.81%, Hohhot fell 6.21%, Taiyuan fell 3.99%, Changchun fell 1.69%, Harbin fell 12.69%, Yantai fell 8.06% Xi'an fell 11.34%.
According to other data, house prices in 18 northern cities have fallen back to the level of 3 years ago. You know, these cities are not Hegang and Yumen, they are all rooted in the large and medium-sized cities in China's best geographical conditions, the most open, and the largest area of the North China Plain. Housing prices in these cities cannot stand up, and the situation in other small and medium-sized cities can be imagined to be worse.
Some people may wonder why the northern cities can't take the lead in taking the lead in the wave of price cuts in the property market? Industry insiders summarize mainly three reasons:
First, the inventory of northern cities is generally high, and the housing market shows a situation of "oversupply". Taking Harbin as an example, data from the E-House Real Estate Research Institute shows that the number of second-hand houses listed in Harbin will always remain above 100,000 units in 2021, and the real market demand is less than 60,000 sets. In terms of new housing, the inventory-to-sales ratio of commercial housing in Harbin at the end of 2021 will exceed 24 months. In addition, new home sales in Harbin in the first three quarters of 2021 fell by 34.8% year-on-year. In a word, whether it is a new house or a second-hand housing market, Harbin inventory is seriously backlogged, and house prices will further "fall" in the future. So it is not difficult to explain why Harbin will become the first city of the national "rescue" in September 2021 - the house price decline is fierce, and if it does not shoot "to the bottom", the market will fluctuate sharply, which is not in line with the main tone of the country's stable property market;
Second, the population loss of northern cities is serious, and in the past five years, more than half of northern cities have experienced a "double decline" in marriage rates and fertility rates. Taking Jilin Province as an example, according to the marriage and divorce data in 2020, Jilin Province is the third in the country (3.99%), and the divorce rate is the first in the country (71.51%): 7 of the 10 couples who married ended up in divorce. In addition, according to the published birth rate data of the permanent population of 31 provinces and cities in the country in 2020, the birth rates of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in 2020 rank in the bottom three, respectively, 5 ‰, 4.65 ‰ and 3.67 ‰. The changes in the household registration population in northeast China from 2013 to 2019 show that among the 34 major cities in northeast China, only Shenyang, Dalian and Panjin are growing in population, of which Shenyang has the largest increase of only 4%, compared with the increase of more than 20% in large and medium-sized cities in the south, which is insignificant. As we all know, population is the determining factor of development, and real estate that lacks population support also has no prospects;
Third, most of the northern cities have weak economic momentum and have lost the basis for supporting the rise in housing prices. Comparing the top ten cities in the south and the north, we will find a surprising result: the economic center of gravity has accelerated to the south, and the gap between the north and the south is becoming more and more obvious. We will not analyze it in detail here, but everyone knows the result. Economic momentum in the rapid development of real estate, the rapid rise in housing prices is an important support, leaving aside the first and second-tier cities in the south, many coastal counties in the south have been flat house prices of 20,000 or 30,000. Looking at the major cities in the north, many house prices have not exceeded 10,000 yuan, such as Harbin is 9660 yuan / square meter, Changchun is 9218 yuan / square meter, Shenyang is 9998 yuan / square meter.
So what does the almost "across-the-board" decline in housing prices in northern cities mean? In the view of experts, this means that the housing price bubble in northern cities is rapidly eliminating, especially in many small and medium-sized cities with accelerated population loss, housing prices are returning to the attribute of pricing at the cost of construction and security, and returning to the real consumption level that the market can afford.
Of course, the main factor affecting the gradual return of housing prices to rationality in northern cities is the change in the housing supply structure and the shrinking of real housing demand. First of all, the housing supply structure has entered the "oversupply" stage, especially in Shenyang, Harbin, Changchun, Dalian, Baoding, Tangshan, Yantai and other cities, the inventory-to-sales ratio of commercial housing is greater than 24 months, and some even exceed 36 months, which means that in the next 2-3 years, even if a square is not developed, there is no worry about selling a house. The same is true of the second-hand housing market, since 2020, the listing volume of most cities in the north has surged rapidly, and the number of second-hand housing listings in Harbin and Changchun has increased by more than 120% at one time, and experts have analyzed that this is a decline in investor confidence and concentrated selling;
Secondly, the real demand for housing has shrunk sharply, which is due to two aspects, one is that the demand for housing in the north is gradually shifting to the south, which is behind the transfer of population and funds; the other is that many residents in northern cities do not need to buy a house at all. In this regard, Zhang Dawei of Zhongyuan Real Estate once explained that many places in the north are dominated by state-owned enterprises, the industrialization process is earlier, and the proportion of non-commercial housing is very large, including a large number of shantytown transformations, and many people do not have to buy houses. Superimposed on multiple factors such as weak economic momentum and population loss in northern cities, the investment value of northern cities is generally low, so rich people basically run to the south to invest in real estate. There is a passage on the Internet that more than half of the houses in Hainan have been bought by northeasterners.
Housing prices in the north are almost completely lost, but in reality, the major cities in the north are still keen on selling land, and developers are still building houses and developing in a hurry, what will be the result of this? Wu Xiaoling, former deputy governor of the central bank, warned in 12 words: There are not many days to party in the bubble. Not only that, she also reminded that "in the future, everyone must be prepared to retreat from the tide." The reason why the tide will retreat is essentially that the future finance should return to its roots, serve the real economy, and serve the general public. Instead of a backlog in the real estate industry as it used to be. Lu Jun believes that Wu Xiaoling's statement that "there are not many days to party in the bubble" mainly refers to the fact that the property bubble will gradually "drain", rather than the "bursting" that many people fantasize about.
As the experts of the Yiju Real Estate Research Institute said, the vast majority of cities in the north have serious population loss, the demand for housing is seriously insufficient, superimposed from 2020 onwards, the state vigorously develops the affordable housing market, and the supply of affordable housing in many cities in the north has doubled, which has caused an impact on commercial housing to a certain extent, coupled with the general decline in the sales performance of commercial housing in major cities in the north in the past two years, so it has finally contributed to the continuous cooling of house prices in northern cities. In particular, the situation in the three provinces of Heijiliao is more serious, with Jilin Province falling the most, more than 10%.
In the view of experts, the cooling of northern cities is not a bad thing, this is to accelerate the bubble out of the clearing, in the property market "squeeze water".
So will house prices fall sharply in the future? Can I still buy a house in 2022?
First of all, the state has set the main tone of "promoting the virtuous cycle and healthy development of the real estate industry" for real estate in 2022, which means that house prices cannot fall sharply in the future. Based on the above analysis, we believe that in 2022, housing prices in most northern cities will "stabilize and continue to fall slightly", especially in cities with serious inventory overstocks such as Harbin and Changchun;
Secondly, real estate cannot be "hard landed", and in the future, with the introduction of policies such as encouraging house purchases and issuing subsidies in major cities, housing prices in many cities will also "stop falling" at the fastest speed. Based on this, we believe that buyers with demand can still buy a house, especially in cities such as Shenyang, Dalian, Qingdao, Tianjin, which have greater medium- and long-term upward pressure, and it is wise to buy a house early. As for most small cities with little name and no investment value, the value of the purchase is not large, and after the purchase, it may have to bear the pressure of depreciation.