No holiday sales boost seen in property market

The just-passed National Day holiday saw disappointing house sales in many major cities in China, but analysts said Sunday this was partly due to ongoing strategies by developers and buyers, as well as by policy makers.

"The slack sales in the golden week were expected, as the traditional peak season tempo of the market has been disrupted by State curbing regulations, and many first-time house buyers bought apartments in previous months," Chen Baocun, deputy director of the research institute with the National Real Estate Managers Association, told the Global Times Sunday.

Average daily sales of new apartments in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei Province, dropped to below 210 units during the first four days of the holiday, the lowest level in six months, according to data from the Wuhan Housing Security and Management Bureau, local newspaper Changjiang Times reported Sunday.

Other large cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Guangzhou have also seen poor sales recently, even though September and October are traditionally the peak season in terms of real estate sales.

Home sales in Guangzhou plunged by roughly 70 percent between September 30 and October 6 compared with the previous week, Xinhua News Agency said Sunday.

China has taken a series of measures to cool down its overheated real estate market since 2010, including restricting home purchases by non-local residents in major cities and raising down payments for multiple-home buyers.

Chen said the continued curbing stance has seriously dampened demand, and buyers are now more cautious. A resident surnamed Wu from Anhui Province told the Global Times Sunday that he had visited several Tianjin housing projects over the past week but is not in a hurry to buy as "developers are not offering serious discounts."

At the end of 2011, many developers felt capital pressure as a result of declining sales and some offered discounts. But a slight recovery in sales from May to August "enabled many of them to keep their prices stable, and the prospect of a better market has made them offer a more limited amount of houses for the time being," Hui Jianqiang, a senior researcher at the Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institute, told the Global Times.

The time of serious cuts to promote sales has passed, Hui said, and there will be only slight cuts and promotions in the coming months.