Text/Leju Finance Wang Min
The latest tone of the Politburo meeting is real estate, and a new round of destocking war has begun!
The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting on April 30. The meeting emphasized the need to continue to prevent and resolve risks in key areas.
Regarding real estate, the meeting stressed that it is necessary to continue to adhere to city-specific policies, consolidate the responsibilities of local governments, real estate enterprises and financial institutions, and do a good job in ensuring the delivery of housing to protect the legitimate rights and interests of buyers. It is necessary to combine the new changes in the supply and demand relationship of the real estate market and the new expectations of the people for high-quality housing, coordinate the study of policies and measures to digest the stock of real estate and optimize the incremental housing, and pay close attention to building a new model of real estate development to promote the high-quality development of real estate.
On the basis of previous meetings and documents, the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee made new arrangements for real estate work.
Real estate is still a key area for risk prevention. At the end of last year, the Central Economic Work Conference made it clear that it is necessary to actively and steadily resolve real estate risks, and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee will continue to prevent and resolve risks as a key task in real estate work.
Li Yujia, chief researcher of the Housing Policy Research Center of the Guangdong Provincial Urban Planning Institute, believes that the prevention and resolution of risks is still the primary task of real estate work, and real estate work should focus on preventing systemic risks.
In addition, this statement is significantly different from the past. A new task in the property market has been put on the agenda, or a new statement: it is necessary to combine the new changes in the supply and demand relationship of the real estate market and the new expectations of the people for high-quality housing, and coordinate the study of policies and measures to digest the stock of real estate and optimize the incremental housing.
According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of March, the area of commercial housing for sale in the country was 748.33 million square meters, a year-on-year increase of 15.6%; Among them, the area of residential buildings for sale increased by 23.9%. This figure has surpassed the historical high of 718.53 million square meters in 2015.
It is worth noting that in 2023, the national inventory of commercial housing will be 670 million square meters, which will increase to 740 million square meters in the first quarter of this year, exceeding the high point of the previous round of inventory.
According to the statistics of the E-House Research Institute, as of March this year, the inventory-to-sales ratio of the inventory of newly built commercial housing in 100 cities across the country was 25.3 months. Among the sample cities of 100 cities, 41 cities have a decommissioning period of more than 36 months, and most of them are third- and fourth-tier cities.
Yang Chang, chief analyst of the policy team of Zhongtai Securities Research Institute, said that for the digestion of stock real estate, there have been many beneficial explorations in some places in the early stage, and then further expansion at the national level is conducive to the formation of positive support for the real estate market.
Li Yujia believes that the current demand for rigid demand and improved housing has great potential, and how to connect the destocking of second-hand houses with the sales of new houses has become the key to stabilizing the real estate market and the volume of the industry.
In terms of specific measures to digest the stock of real estate, Wang Qing, chief macro analyst of Oriental Jincheng, put forward two policy ideas: one is to convert part of the stock of commercial housing into affordable housing, which may form an effective supply of affordable housing in a relatively short period of time and solve people's livelihood problems; The second is to fully relax the purchase restrictions, guide the residential mortgage interest rate to further decline, and activate the property market, which is the main channel for digesting the stock of real estate, and it is also a key move to reverse the current expectations of the property market.
On the evening of April 30, after the central government's new statement on the property market, the Ministry of Natural Resources immediately issued a notice on doing a good job in the supply of residential land in 2024.
Among them, the notice clearly mentions that if the de-conversion period of commercial housing exceeds 36 months, the transfer of new commercial residential land should be suspended, and at the same time, great efforts should be made to revitalize the stock until the de-conversion period of commercial housing falls below 36 months; Cities with a period of 18 months (exclusive) to 36 months for the decommissioning of commercial residential buildings shall, in accordance with the principle of "how much to revitalize, how much to supply", dynamically determine the upper limit of the area of newly transferred commercial residential land according to the area of existing commercial residential land (including completion and resumption) that will be revitalized in the current year.
On the other hand, on the same day that the Politburo meeting was held in Beijing, Beijing loosened its purchase restrictions.
In addition to Tongzhou, all residents who meet the conditions for Beijing's purchase restrictions, whether single or family, whether registered or non-registered, can buy one more residence outside the Fifth Ring Road on the basis of the original purchase limit.
It is worth noting that this adjustment is the first adjustment ushered in by Beijing's housing purchase restriction policy that has been implemented for 13 years since 2011.
On the same day, Tianjin followed the pace and also relaxed the purchase restrictions.
It mentions that the purchase restrictions will be lifted for residents of Hebei and Beijing - residents with household registration in Beijing and Hebei Province and those employed in Beijing and Hebei Province who purchase houses in Tianjin will enjoy the housing purchase policy for residents with household registration in Tianjin.
In addition, up to now, among the first- and second-tier cities, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Suzhou, Chengdu, Suzhou and many other cities have canceled or partially canceled purchase restrictions.
Some people in the industry will summarize the new deployment of the meeting on real estate as "the optimal increase of consumption", this policy idea from the perspective of stock and increment, the implementation of the new changes in the relationship between supply and demand in the real estate market, the future may be expected to part of the investment and financing platform to participate in the "consumption" work.
In addition, in the fields of credit bond issuance, "whitelist" project financing and operating property loans, there have been frequent positive signals in real estate financing recently.
According to Wind data, as of May 6, 70 real estate companies have successfully issued 188 domestic credit bonds this year, with a total financing scale of about 171.789 billion yuan, an increase of 5.25% over the same period last year.
Industry bond financing showed a long-awaited year-on-year growth trend. Following the implementation of the "white list" support policy for real estate enterprises and the new regulations on operating property loans at the beginning of the year, the shortlisted projects have received loans of hundreds of billions of yuan. In addition, leading commercial real estate companies such as Longfor and Vanke have obviously benefited from the issuance of operating property loans.
Some industry insiders said that at present, central state-owned enterprises and some mixed-ownership enterprises are driving direct financing in the open market. Real estate companies with the background of major shareholders and high-quality underlying assets have obvious financing advantages.
In addition, this year, the leading real estate enterprises in the field of commercial real estate have made substantial progress in the implementation of loans.
Xie Yifeng, president of the China Urban Real Estate Research Institute, said that from the financing performance of various fields of the real estate industry, the current financing market is showing a phased recovery, and the financing environment of real estate enterprises has improved, but this improvement is not obvious enough.
Xie Yifeng also added that from the recent Politburo meeting's policy direction of "destocking", the follow-up of such central state-owned enterprises and mixed enterprises still have more advantages: "For a long time, central state-owned enterprises and urban investment enterprises have done a very good job in acquiring commercial housing and transforming it into affordable housing. ”
"Destocking" will be the top priority for the real estate market this year, and more policies may follow in the future.