China’s home sales continued to slump in December, underscoring the challenge to reverse the property downturn amid Covid outbreaks.
(Bloomberg) — China’s home sales continued to slump in December, underscoring the challenge to reverse the property downturn amid Covid outbreaks.
The 100 biggest real estate developers saw new home sales drop 30.8% from a year earlier to 677.5 billion yuan ($98.2 billion) in December, according to preliminary data from China Real Estate Information Corp. That compared with a 25.5% decline in November.
The declines came a month after policy makers unveiled a sweeping plan to rescue the sector, focusing mainly on the supply side by easing financing to developers. Those efforts however have been offset by surging Covid infections.
“As the peak of the Covid outbreak hasn’t passed, the economic recovery remains very weak and homebuyers’ income outlook hasn’t recovered,” Chen Wenjing, associate research director at China Index Holdings, said on Thursday. “We expect home sales to recover in the second quarter at the earliest.”
China’s vice premier has hinted at providing further policy support, describing the sector as a “pillar” of the economy in a rare instance.
China abruptly ended its Covid Zero policy about a month ago. Nearly 37 million people may have been infected on a single day in December, making the country’s outbreak by far the world’s largest, Bloomberg reported, citing estimates from the government’s top health authority.
–With assistance from Jing Li.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
