Home-Price Growth in China Slowest in Almost Two Years

(Bloomberg) -- China’s home-price growth slowed for a sixth straight month in November, with developers offering deeper discounts in a lackluster market.

• New-home prices, excluding state-subsidized housing, rose just 0.3% last month from October in 70 major cities, National Bureau of Statistics data showed Monday. That’s the slowest gain since February 2018.
• Twenty-one cities reported a drop in values, the most in almost four years. The most evident decline was in second-tier cities, mainly regional economic hubs, even as some of those centers made it easier for people to obtain highly sought-after residency permits, which have the potential to spur sales.

Key Insights

• Developers may have to cut prices even further to meet sales targets set at the beginning of the year. Buyer sentiment has deteriorated, with transactions last month slipping 1% from October after a 37% surge in supply, China Real Estate Information Corp. data show
• The focus is shifting to whether policy makers might ease property curbs and loosen financing restrictions on home builders. At the Communist Party’s annual economic planning meeting last week, goals for the housing market next year weren’t explicitly stated
• Some economists, including those at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., forecast authorities may have become “slightly less hawkish” regarding concerns about property sector over-tightening. However they say a full-scale easing is unlikely
• “Economic factors are likely compelling Beijing to adjust its overly hawkish stance on the property sector,” Lu Ting, the chief China economist at Nomura International (HK) Ltd., wrote before the data release

Get More

• Home sales and builders’ investment in property development both recorded smaller increases in November, a separate data release Monday showed
• The worst may be yet to come. A leading indicator on property development -- developers’ new starts -- declined from a month earlier for the first time in 25 months
• For more detail on the data, click here

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Emma Dong in Shanghai at edong10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg