The property market "golden nine silver ten" faded: the volume and price of second-hand houses fell together, and housing enterprises "grabbed the harvest"

21st Century Business Herald reporter Kong Haili reported from Beijing

After the "Golden Nine" broke the contract, the "Silver Ten" of the property market also failed to arrive as scheduled.

In October, the real estate market continued its downward trend. According to the data of the Middle Finger Research Institute, the transaction scale of commercial housing in 50 key cities in October was at the lowest level in the same period in the past five years, with a year-on-year decline of more than 20%, which continued to decline month-on-month; the Shell Research Institute also came to the same conclusion according to the analysis of the online signature data of 25 first- and second-tier cities under key observation - the transaction volume of new houses in the "Golden Nine Silver Ten" in 2021 fell by more than 20% year-on-year.

In terms of house prices, data from the Middle Finger Research Institute shows that the month-on-month increase in the price of new houses in 100 cities in October has narrowed for 4 consecutive months, with a month-on-month increase of less than 1%, and the cumulative increase in new house prices this year is also at the lowest level in the same period in the past five years; the price of second-hand houses fell for the first time in the year, and the number of cities that fell significantly increased.

At the same time, the sales of the top 100 housing enterprises also recorded a sharp decline. According to the data of E-House Real Estate Research Institute, during the "Golden Nine" period, the monthly sales performance of 30 housing enterprises with the highest sales scale fell by 8% month-on-month, down 35% year-on-year, and the year-on-year decline was expanded; a report released by Kerui pointed out that during the "Silver Ten" period, more than 80% of the top 100 housing enterprises decreased their single-month performance year-on-year, of which 44 housing enterprises fell by more than 30% year-on-year.

"Golden Nine Silver Ten" is not only a "barometer" of the property market, but also a key marketing node for developers to grab revenue. Nowadays, the significance of this landmark stage is fading, behind which is the change in the overall expectations of the property market, and the development logic of housing enterprises is also under this cooling situation, and it has to enter the fundamentals of "debt reduction and stable cash flow".

High season is no more

Signs of a shift in the property market to cooling have begun since the second half of the year, driving expectations to continue to decline.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in July and August this year, the monthly transaction volume of commercial housing in the country continued to decline, and the sales area of commercial housing in August was even lower than that in the same period in 2019; in the past traditional sense of "peak season" September, the data still did not improve, real estate investment, sales, and house prices fell, and the sales scale of commercial housing in that month even fell to double digits, and house prices fell for the first time in nearly 5 years.

The October data once again validates the disappearance of the "peak season".

The Middle Finger Research Institute pointed out that in October, the transaction area of commercial housing in 50 cities was about 25.28 million square meters, a year-on-year decline of more than 20%, continued to decline month-on-month, the absolute scale was at the lowest level in the same period in the past five years, and the market activity declined; further specific to 16 key research cities, the transaction volume fell by 24.6% year-on-year, of which second-tier cities fell by 34.6% year-on-year, and third-tier cities fell by 24.6% year-on-year.

Not only new houses, but also the second-hand houses that bear the game expectations of buyers and sellers, which used to be the "bottom" of the market, are gradually falling into the ice cave.

Taking the first-tier cities where the stock housing market is more mainstream as an example, the latest data from the Shenzhen Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau shows that in October this year, Shenzhen traded a total of 1605 second-hand residential buildings, with a transaction area of 150,400 square meters, down 66.42% year-on-year; the number of completed units fell by 9.1% compared with September.

The transaction volume of The second-hand housing market in Beijing has also declined significantly. Zhongyuan Real Estate data shows that Beijing signed 9340 sets of second-hand housing online in October, a year-on-year decrease of 53.4%, a month-on-month reduction of 25.7%, which is also the 7th consecutive month of transaction reduction in Beijing's second-hand housing market.

"The less than 10,000 second-hand houses represent a comprehensive price reduction in the market." Zhang Dawei, chief analyst of Zhongyuan Real Estate, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, "There is a practice in the Beijing property market, the second-hand housing network signing is less than 15,000 sets, the market is definitely in a downturn, and the transaction volume of less than 10,000 sets is also the lowest valley in the Beijing market after the epidemic in March 2020." ”

The effect of the continuous decline in volume ultimately plays a role in house prices.

According to the 100-city price index of the Middle Finger Research Institute, in October 2021, the average price of newly built residential buildings in 100 cities was 16189 yuan / square meter, up 0.09% month-on-month, and the increase was narrowed by 0.05 percentage points from the previous month, which has narrowed for 4 consecutive months, and the monthly increase in new house prices fell to the low point of the year; there were 31 cities that fell month-on-month in October.

The average price of second-hand residential buildings in 100 cities was 16026 yuan / square meter, down 0.04% month-on-month, which was the first time that the second-hand residential price index of 100 cities fell since its release in June 2020.

According to the analysis of many institutional sources, starting in the second half of 2021, the most critical reason for the rapid cooling of the national property market as a whole is the tightening of credit, the limited amount of mortgage loans, and the lengthening of the issuance cycle, which seriously restricts market transactions.

Regarding the year-end trend, Chen Wenjing, deputy director of research at the Index Division of the Middle Finger Research Institute, expects that in the fourth quarter, there will be policy fine-tuning expectations in some cities, and the overall market is expected to improve, but the policy environment is still relatively strict, the short-term market still has adjustment pressure, and the sales area and amount of commercial housing in the country are expected to continue to decline year-on-year. The increase in house prices may be further narrowed, and house prices in some cities are facing certain adjustment pressure.

Zhang Dawei pointed out that as the supply of brewing in the market continues to increase, if the credit data is not significantly eased, and the mortgage demands of home buyers are still queued up, the Beijing property market is expected to have a price war at the end of the year.

Housing enterprises "grab the difficulty"

In previous years, the "Golden Nine Silver Ten" has always been accompanied by the promotional activities of housing enterprises, and measures such as discounts, special rooms, and free parking spaces have emerged in an endless stream, and the developer's push this year has not weakened.

But the cooling of the overall housing market has dampened that effort.

Kerry data show that due to the obvious cooling of the market in the second half of the year, the single-month performance of the top 100 housing enterprises in October continued the downward trend since July compared with last year, but the decline was slightly narrowed to 32.2%.

Specifically from the perspective of enterprise performance, more than 80% of the top 100 housing enterprises in October decreased their single-month performance year-on-year, of which 44 housing enterprises fell by more than 30% year-on-year. At the same time, including the vast majority of top 30 housing enterprises, nearly 80% of the single-month performance of enterprises is less than the average monthly level in the first half of the year. Overall, the performance of housing enterprises in October was not as good as in the first half of the year and the same period of history, and the number of top 100 housing enterprises fell year-on-year to 37.

In the report, Kerry pointed out that the market continues to cool, and the discounts of housing companies are stronger than before.

More than 60% of the new projects in Beijing launched special-priced housing, the discount force is not less than 90%, the former hot selling disk and even the pin-top project began to use the intermediary channel to expand customers; some projects in Shanghai took the initiative to extend the subscription time due to insufficient subscription; Guangzhou housing enterprises discounted price reduction or even normalization, more than half of the real estate price reduction promotion, some projects launched the house, the price reduction range of up to 30%; Shenzhen new housing market is also cold, in addition to individual Net red disks can still achieve daylight, many projects use intermediary channel distribution, Even compete for customer resources by increasing the commission ratio.

Sales continue to decline, which further exacerbates the financial difficulties of housing enterprises.

Since the second half of last year, the policy side has increased the prudent management of real estate finance, and the capital control of housing enterprises has never been stricter. On the one hand, the hard requirements of the "three red lines" have prompted housing enterprises to accelerate into the "leverage reduction" channel; on the other hand, the gradual tightening of real estate credit has restricted the scale expansion of housing enterprises, and in serious cases, even due to insufficient liquidity, they have fallen into debt difficulties.

In the survey of 21st Century Business Herald, many housing enterprises have reported that the amount of real estate development loans is insufficient, even if they are in the "green file", it is difficult to find capital cooperation institutions.

An executive in charge of finance of a national housing enterprise told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, "The more obvious change is that it is difficult to recover the mortgage payment." Sales collection is an important source of funds for housing enterprises, front-end financing is already tight, superimposed sales downturn and slow collection speed, resulting in great cash flow challenges. ”

"If sales continue to decline, the financial pressure of even stable housing enterprises will be magnified." The person added.

But the good news is that since September, the central bank, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and other countries have repeatedly spoken out that they will "safeguard the healthy development of the real estate market and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of housing consumers", "correct the deviation" of excessive contraction in the implementation of some banks, and maintain the smooth and orderly release of real estate credit. At the same time, it is believed that there are individual problems in the current real estate market, but the overall risk is controllable, reasonable capital needs are being met, and the overall situation of healthy development of the real estate market will not change.

Dr. Liu Shui, head of research at the Enterprise Division of the Middle Finger Research Institute, believes that the marginal adjustment of the real estate credit policy will be relaxed, the demand side of the reasonable housing loan demand will be met, the reasonable financing needs of the supply side of the housing enterprises will be satisfied, the financing difficulties will be alleviated, the sales will pick up, and the sales funds of the housing enterprises will be accelerated.

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