In the first quarter of 2024, the real estate market as a whole remained low, and corporate sales continued to be under pressure.
According to the report released by CRIC Research Center, the sales volume of the top 100 real estate companies in March was 358.32 billion yuan, an increase of 92.8% from the previous month in February, but the scale of monthly performance remained at a historically low level, a year-on-year decrease of 45.8%. From the perspective of cumulative performance, the top 100 real estate companies achieved sales of 779.24 billion yuan from January to March, a year-on-year decrease of 47.5%.
While the sales side is still sluggish, the investment of the top 100 real estate companies is highly concentrated. In the first quarter, only 30% of the top 100 sales companies acquired land, but the amount of land acquired increased by 14% year-on-year, and it was still dominated by central state-owned enterprises.
The performance of nearly 9 of the top 100 real estate companies declined year-on-year
According to the report, in March 2024, more than eighty percent of the top 100 real estate companies achieved a month-on-month increase in performance, but nearly ninety percent of the real estate companies with a year-on-year decrease in monthly and cumulative performance also accounted for nearly ninety percent. There are as many as 52 companies with a year-on-year decline of more than 50% in a single month, and the overall year-on-year performance is declining.
In the first quarter, there were only 16 real estate companies with a cumulative trading amount of more than 10 billion yuan in the top 100 real estate companies, compared with 34 in the same period in 2023 and 40 in the same period in 2022. Even with full-caliber sales, there are only 20 real estate companies with more than 10 billion yuan.
It is worth noting that China Overseas Real Estate achieved full-caliber sales of 41.21 billion yuan in March, ranking first among the top 100 in a single month, hitting a new high in the past year. In this regard, CRIC Research Center pointed out that the main reason is that the Zhonghai Shunchang Jiuli project in the Shanghai Xintiandi sector has an inverted price, which contributed 19.65 billion yuan on the opening day of March 28, and refreshed the highest sales record of a single opening of commercial housing in the country.
At the same time, from the perspective of changes in sales thresholds, the sales thresholds of the top 100 real estate companies in March were further reduced compared with the same period last year, and the thresholds fell to the lowest level in recent years. Among them, the threshold of the sales amount of the top 10 real estate enterprises was reduced by 55.8% year-on-year to 20 billion yuan. The thresholds for the top 30 and top 50 real estate enterprises also decreased by 47.7% and 44.8% year-on-year to 5.45 billion yuan and 3.28 billion yuan respectively. The threshold for the sales transaction amount of the top 100 real estate enterprises was lowered by 48.2% to 1.3 billion yuan.
The amount of land acquired by the top 100 sales increased by 14% year-on-year
In terms of investment, only 30% of the top 100 sales companies acquired land in the first quarter, but the amount of land acquired increased by 14% year-on-year, and investment was highly concentrated. Moreover, the overall investment pattern has not changed, and it is still dominated by central state-owned enterprises that have acquired more land in the past three years.
Judging from the TOP10 of the top 100 sales of land acquisition, the pattern of the strong will be maintained. According to the analysis of CRIC Research Center, on the one hand, the amount of land acquired by most enterprises has increased compared with the first quarter of last year, among them, the investment amount of China Resources and Binjiang has increased by nearly 50% year-on-year, and China Construction Yipin, China Railway Construction and other China Construction Systems have also carried out investment arrangements in advance in the first quarter. On the other hand, the full-caliber land acquisition and sales ratio of these enterprises is much higher than the industry average, and the investment enthusiasm is high.
From the perspective of the threshold of the top 100 investments, the threshold value of the top 100 new land reserves in the first quarter of 2024 is 1.45 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 32%, and the threshold value of the new total price and the top 100 construction area are 450 million yuan and 149,000 square meters respectively, a year-on-year decrease of 32% and 16% respectively.
It is worth noting that although the threshold value of the top 100 decreased year-on-year, after the transaction of high-quality "land kings" in core cities such as Suzhou, Xiamen and Ningbo in March, the threshold value of the top 10 new goods reached 12.61 billion yuan, an increase of 32% year-on-year, and the concentration of new value continued to rise.
In terms of total volume, from January to March, the total value of new goods, the total price and the total amount of the top 100 construction area were 528 billion yuan, 223 billion yuan and 31.94 million square meters respectively, and the total value and amount of goods increased by 4% and 6% year-on-year respectively, but the total amount of construction area decreased by 2% year-on-year, and the year-on-year rebound in value and amount was mainly due to the transfer of high-quality land plots in core cities.
The weak recovery trend may continue in April
CRIC Research Center pointed out that since the beginning of this year, despite the continuous optimization and release of favorable policies, and the relaxation of regulatory policies in first-tier and some strong second-tier core cities, the market confidence support is insufficient, demand and purchasing power are sluggish, industry expectations have not been significantly repaired, and the overall trend of the market is not clear. It is expected that the market supply and demand will not warm significantly in the short term, and corporate sales will continue to face greater pressure.
Predicting April, CRIC Research Center believes that the total volume of transactions may continue to recover weakly, and the absolute volume will be the same as that in March or increase slightly, but based on the high base of last year, the year-on-year decline will continue.
In addition, from the perspective of real estate investment, the current state-owned enterprises with financial strength will continue to add core high-quality land reserves, and the core high-quality land plots will be more concentrated in the hands of leading real estate companies in the future, and the future market pattern will be further highly concentrated, but the active storage of such real estate enterprises has limited effect on the overall land market. For most of the real estate companies that are still facing greater cash pressure, the current delivery and resumption of sales are still the biggest problems, and the enthusiasm for investment is still weak, and it is necessary to wait for the market to recover and stabilize before changing the investment attitude.