China Breaks Six-Month Streak of Accelerating Home-Price Gains
(Bloomberg) -- China's home-price gains slowed in September, breaking a half-year streak of accelerating inflation in the housing market.
New-home prices gained 1 percent from the previous month, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday. That compared with a 1.5 percent increase in August.
The Chinese government is likely to keep a tight grip on the property market at least until next year, despite a shift in policy focus from deleveraging to supporting slower growth under rising trade tensions, according to economists including Capital Economics. Officials are seeking to avert a resurgence in buying frenzies as they step up efforts to increase credit supply.
“A market correction has started, as sales have undoubtedly cooled,” Yang Kewei, Shanghai-based research director at China Real Estate Information Corp., said before the release. “A bottleneck in residential purchasing power has been seen in some cities, especially those in second tiers.”
Big Discounts
Signs of a home-market slowdown emerged last month under the Chinese government's protracted housing curbs. Builders offered hefty discounts to speed sales, while a growing number of land parcels went unsold.
The biggest month-on-month price increase in September was a 6.2 percent gain in Xi'an, the data for 70 cities show. In Beijing, where more tightening was announced last month, values remained unchanged. In Shanghai, prices declined by 0.1 percent.
China's developers, already weighed down by a financing squeeze, face another potential blow in their biggest funding channel after a report last month that a local authority is considering ending the practice of selling apartments before they're finished.
Builders are the gloomiest in eight years as buyer demand wanes. Over the so-called Golden Week holiday, typically a buoyant period for home sale, only about half of properties offered ended up sold, a marked slowdown from two months earlier, CRIC analysts led by Yang wrote in a Tuesday report.
| Read more: |
| * China Developers' Funding Source at Risk in Sales Crackdown * There's at Least One Chinese City Getting Busy Banning Pre-Sales |
--With assistance from Stephen Tan.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Emma Dong in Shanghai at edong10@bloomberg.net;Miao Han in Beijing at mhan22@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, ;Andrew Monahan at amonahan@bloomberg.net, ;Stanley James at sjames8@bloomberg.net, Ken McCallum, John McCluskey
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Editorial Board
-
A New Samvat Wishlist: Inclusive Prosperity And Human Development
India has strengthened its economic foundations through infrastructure, digital access and enterprise. Its next growth chapter must deepen productivity, create better livelihoods and widen participation in prosperity.
-
Love, Sex Aur Dhokha: The Audacious Plot To Spy On Jensen Huang
A Taipei dinner, a Singapore chip buyer and a suspected Chinese asset: inside the alleged spy operation that got close to NVIDIA's Jensen Huang.
-
Ten Things I Learnt This Samvat
Patience can be a trap. Cheap stocks can stay cheap. Leverage can wipe you out. What did Samvat 2082 teach us? Niraj Shah writes on 10 lessons from the year gone by.
-
Talking Points This Week: Tech Nerves, FII Buying, And A Faraway Banking Shock
The global markets are not shining this Diwali. The exception in the large markets is, India.
-
Midterm Rally Lasted A Day. The Hard Reality Of A Divided US May Last Two Years | Opinion
Between a contested AI boom, a debt ceiling that arrives in 2027 and a president with every incentive to act alone, the next two years may prove more volatile than the first day's rally suggests.
-
Blue Wave Will Derail the AI Trade but Won't Dismantle the AI Era | Unhedged Position
The Democrats' sweep of the US Congress will see politics collide with economic forces both over the long and short term.
-
It's Time To Take The GST Council's Bet On Trust Global
Payment records can prove India's services exports, and clear, proportionate rules can bring foreign digital sellers into the tax net.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
-
Navigating Energy Crossroads: S Jaishankar's Call For Diversified Supply Chains At G20 Ministerial Meeting
As geopolitical fault lines continue to test maritime trade routes and commodity flows, Jaishankar's message remains pertinent: true economic resilience requires open markets, protected transit lines, and a genuine commitment to multilateral cooperation rather than coercion.
