The circle of friends was swiped by the blockbuster news of the property market for a day. In the past few days, the "small composition" rumored in the market has been decided.
To do a good job in the risk disposal of unfinished commercial housing, the government will personally act as a "buyer". Has the inflection point of China's property market, which has been in the doldrums for a long time, come?
Previously, it was rumored that the relevant departments were considering letting local governments buy the unsold housing stock, and multiple ministries and commissions set up a joint working group to make a big move.
On May 17, the national video conference on ensuring the delivery of housing was held in Beijing, and He Lifeng, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, made it clear at the summit:
"The relevant local governments should proceed from the actual situation and properly dispose of the idle stock of residential land that has been transferred by means of recovery and acquisition as appropriate, so as to help real estate enterprises with financial difficulties to solve their difficulties. In cities with a large inventory of commercial housing, the government may purchase some commercial housing at a reasonable price as appropriate. ”
Not only did the rumors land, but the day was related to the mortgage, and the central bank issued three notices in a row-
- Abolish the lower limit of the interest rate policy for commercial personal housing loans for the first and second houses at the national level;
- The interest rate of the first set of personal housing provident fund loans for less than 5 years (including 5 years) and more than 5 years will be adjusted to 2.35% and 2.85% respectively;
- The minimum down payment ratio is adjusted to not less than 15% for the first house and 25% for the second house.
Both the down payment ratio and the loan interest rate have reached historic lows.
Zheng Shulun, president of Centaline Real Estate (Chinese mainland) South China, told Shenzhen Satellite TV direct financial reporters: The policy strength is far greater than in 2008, which has a great effect on market confidence, and confidence is the key to reversing the decline of real estate.
Back in 2008, the PBOC lowered the benchmark lending rate for five consecutive times, and the minimum down payment ratio was adjusted to 20%. The Ministry of Finance temporarily lowered the deed tax rate for the first purchase of ordinary houses of 90 square meters or less to 1%, and temporarily exempted stamp duty and land value-added tax, which played an important role in expanding domestic demand at that time.
On the other hand, this time, the central bank's "three arrows" are unprecedented in history, reducing the interest burden of residential mortgage loans. It reduces the cost of buying a house, allows more people with insufficient funds or are on the sidelines to enter the market, and strengthens market liquidity.
Affordable housing has become an important policy fulcrum this time, with purchase instead of construction, and the central bank has contributed real money to support local governments to purchase completed and unsold commercial housing at reasonable prices.
The state buys back the stock of real estate into affordable housing, and now the inventory is so large, there is no need to spend money to build, which not only solves the problem of affordable housing, but also solves the problem of destocking.
The central bank said at a press conference on the afternoon of the 17th that it would set up a 300 billion yuan affordable housing reloan.
There are also many views in the market that the amount of 300 billion affordable housing refinancing can be reduced, and further efforts are still needed and the recovery of the willingness of residents to buy houses after the expected recovery of housing prices.
Regardless of the follow-up effect, these current moves, combined with the historic easing policy, will have a far-reaching impact.
How will cities move forward?
On the morning of the release of the blockbuster policy, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the economic operation in April. Among them, the sales prices of commercial housing in all tiers of cities continued to decline in April.
In April, the sales price of newly built commercial residential buildings in first-tier cities fell by 0.6% month-on-month, an increase of 0.5 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen fell by 0.7%, 1.3% and 1.0% respectively, and Shanghai rose by 0.3%.
There is a lot of pressure everywhere.
Let's set our sights on Shenzhen first.
According to data from Centaline Real Estate, Shenzhen currently has a high stock of new houses, with a de-escalation period of more than 20 months, especially in non-core areas such as Longgang, Guangming, Baoan, Longhua and Pingshan.
For example, the stock of new houses in Longgang exceeds 10,000 units, Guangming and Longhua exceed 8,000 units, and the inventory of Baoan and Pingshan also exceeds 6,000 units.
Chen Aipeng, an expert of the China Real Estate Research Association and executive chairman of the Shenzhen Housing Research Association, believes that Shenzhen needs to immediately study some administrative control measures taken on the real estate market in the past to further liberate the Shenzhen market. At the same time, in view of the "14th Five-Year Plan" housing security and housing planning, he suggested that a reassessment should be carried out and some structural adjustments should be considered.
Since Shenzhen issued a zoning optimization purchase restriction policy on May 6, from May 6 to 16, the average daily transaction volume of second-hand houses reached 206 units.
Zhou Yanjiang, director of industry development of Shenzhen Real Estate Agents Association, told Shenzhen Satellite TV direct financial reporter that this data has increased by 25% compared with the daily average in April and 48% compared with the same period in 2023, which shows that the policy is still very obvious to boost the market. Combined with this blockbuster policy, there will definitely be a wave of improvement in market activity in the future.
Looking at other cities, just a few days ago (May 14), Hangzhou fired a submachine gun for the government to buy commercial housing.
Although the scale of Hangzhou is not large, the acquisition of new houses of no more than 10,000 square meters for public rental housing. It is foreseeable that in the initial stage of the policy in each city, the scope of trial implementation will not be very large.
However, once the inventory of new homes is effectively removed, the second-hand housing market will also benefit, and the overall market confidence will be restored, and it will enter a good and effective market cycle.
Since the beginning of this year, for the property market, whether it is the central or local government, there has been a "king bomb" policy from time to time, but the overall logic is very clear, that is, to destock, expand domestic demand, and boost confidence.
According to incomplete statistics from the Zhuge Data Research Center, as of now, a total of 23 cities, including Chengdu, Hangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan, Xiamen, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Xi'an, have completely canceled purchase restrictions. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are also making continuous moves to optimize purchase restrictions.
Beijing's property market has recently been loosened one after another. Following the relaxation of restrictions on the purchase of the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, the relevant identification standards for the third house will be released, and the purchase of the third house outside the Fifth Ring Road by a family will be implemented according to the loan interest rate of the second house.
According to the China Index Research Institute, in recent years, the number of new housing transactions outside Beijing's Fifth Ring Road has accounted for about 80% of the city's total, and the new policy is expected to drive the activity of the new housing market.
In addition, Guangzhou has relaxed the purchase restriction on housing of more than 120 square meters, and Shanghai has relaxed the purchase restriction on single people. The relaxation of the purchase restriction policy has become the general trend.
Recently, many places have also issued new policies to reduce the "shared area", and public stairwells are no longer included, which means that the housing rate inside the house will increase.
The superposition and gradual implementation of policies will surely improve the expectations and activity of the real estate market.
Can "vigorously" work miracles? It is necessary to see the follow-up market feedback. However, the new idea of constantly optimizing destocking is blowing a "new wind" for China's real estate.
Writer / Li Tiannan
Reporter / Ma Xiaoyang
Edited by Lan Wei and Wang Yu
Typesetting / Liu Yajing, Li Ting
Reviewed by Jin Yangyi