China’s long-suffering real estate market continues to post year-on-year declines in all indicators at the beginning of 2024, Kallanish learns from the combined data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for January-February.

Chinese developers invested a total of CNY 1.18 trillion ($164.5 billion) into the industry over January-February, down 9% from the same period of 2023. Within this, residential investment dropped even faster at 9.7%.

Along with the falling funds, two-month new starts slumped 29.7% on-year to 94.29 million square metres. While completions lost 20.2% to 103.95m sqm, despite completions being a priority for developers under government requirements.

Two-month sales in terms of area and value plummeted 24.8% and 29.3% on-year to 113.69m sqm and CNY 1.05 trillion respectively, indicating a y-o-y decrease in average price.

By the end of February, commercial housing for sale rose 15.9% to 759.69m sqm. Of that, the residential area for sale increased by 23.8% to 405m sqm. This is 5.7% higher than the previous high set in year-end 2015, when numerous stimulus policies were introduced. This implies less demand for new house construction and completions in the near future.