Citizens visit a property developer’s sales office in Ningbo, East China’s Zhejiang Province, on March 4, 2023. Photo: VCG

 
Shanghai's property market ended 2023 on a high note as a series of supportive measures took effect, new market data revealed.

Shanghai saw a 27 percent month-on-month increase in the number of newly built homes sold in December, totaling around 80,000 units for the entire year, market data from Chinese real-estate brokerage company, Lianjia showed on Monday.

Additionally, the city witnessed a nine percent month-on-month increase in the number of second-hand homes sold in December, reaching a total of 15,300 units in 2023, a 23 percent year-on-year increase. The cumulative transaction value of second-hand houses in Shanghai in 2023 amounted to 605.5 billion yuan ($85.28 billion), reflecting a year-on-year growth rate of 16 percent.

Despite a relatively sluggish performance in second half of 2023, the Shanghai property market has maintained a certain level of resilience. With continuous policy support, the monthly average transaction volume remained around 14,000 units, showing a decrease from the previous two years but still indicating some level of activity, data from Lianjia revealed.

It is worth noting that Shanghai, as a first-tier city, has been adjusting its property market policies starting from September 2023.

In a fresh move the city on January 2 announced adjustments to the individual housing loan policy using the Shanghai Housing Provident Fund. It clarified the criteria for identifying second homes for improvement and reduced the minimum down payment ratio for such homes.

On December 14, Shanghai revised policies to ease the threshold that divides regular homes and "luxury homes" allowing more home purchasers to qualify for favorable policies, lowered the minimum down payment ratio for first homes to 30 percent, and reduced interest rates for both first and second homes.

On September 1, Shanghai implemented a new policy, which allowed residents without any previous property ownership to be treated as first-time homebuyers regardless of whether they had previously used loans to purchase homes. This policy reduced the cost of home buyers who have no previous property ownership record in Shanghai.

China's housing market which has been facing a downturn in 2023, yet both the central and local governments have been taking measures to shore up real demand of housing purchases and help meet real estate firms' reasonable financing needs.

In the past year, more than 670 policies have been introduced in various provinces and cities across the country to support development of real estate industry, Yicai reported.

Addressing the property market, the Central Economic Work Conference, which set priorities for economic policies in 2024, noted that reasonable financing needs of real estate enterprises of different ownerships should be met equally and the building of a new development model for the real estate sector should be accelerated.

Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, said that there is still room for further relaxation of current property policies. 

Various real estate policies across the country will continue to release positive signals, actively supporting reasonable housing consumption demands and playing a positive role in reducing the cost of homebuying and boosting market sentiment, Yan told the Global Times.