BEIJING (Reuters) – China's fragile housing market opened this year with a slowing decline in real estate investment and sales, supported by government efforts to stem a prolonged housing sector downturn, official data said on Monday. It was shown to.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), real estate investment in China decreased by 9.0% year-on-year in the first two months of 2024, compared to a 24.0% decline in December 2023.
Real estate sales by floor area decreased by 20.5% from the same month last year in January to February, compared to a 23.0% decrease in December last year.
Official property figures released last week showed house prices fell 0.3% month-on-month in February, matching January's decline and showing the sector is struggling to stabilize.
China is stepping up measures to revitalize its fragile real estate sector after a regulator's crackdown on developer leverage snowballed into a liquidity crisis.
In January, authorities launched a so-called “whitelist” mechanism to direct state bank funds to local real estate projects that city governments have certified as warranting loan support.
Last month, China announced the biggest ever cut in benchmark mortgage interest rates to support struggling real estate.
But market participants remain largely unperturbed as home purchases, loans and construction starts for real estate companies continue to decline.
Household lending, mainly mortgages, fell by 590.7 billion yuan ($82.08 billion) in February after increasing by 980.1 billion yuan in January, according to Reuters calculations based on central bank data.
New construction starts, measured on a floor space basis, decreased by 29.7% year-on-year, after declining by 11.56% in December 2023.
Funds raised by Chinese real estate developers fell 24.1% year-on-year, following a 17.8% drop in December last year.
(1 dollar = 7.1970 Chinese Yuan)
(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Liangping Gao, Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes)
