A view of a residential property project under construction in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province on May 9, 2024. The city announced the same day that it will lift all home purchase restrictions, making it among the first Chinese cities to completely abolish purchase restrictions amid a nationwide effort to shore up the real estate market. Photo: VCG

China's property market displayed signs of improvement in terms of sales revenues of the top 100 real estate developers, an industry report showed on Monday.

Nearly 60 percent of the top 100 developers saw their home sales values registering a month-on-month increase in June, domestic news portal thepaper.cn reported, citing a report by major real estate information provider CRIC.

Meanwhile, some 30 percent of these companies saw home sales values posting a year-on-year increase. In June, the country's top 100 developers realized home sales values of 438.93 billion yuan ($60.39 billion), down 16.7 percent year-on-year but up 36.3 percent from that of May.

The improving data comes as intense supportive policies have been released nationwide to help put the property sector on a firmer footing amid a period of correction.

On June 26, Beijing joined other first-tier cities, including Shanghai, in easing home buying policies and sending positive signals to the property sector by announcing a number of supportive policies, including lowering the minimum down payment ratio for first-time home buyers to 20 percent from the previous 30 percent. 

The report noted that since the end of April, the relaxation of housing policies has obviously encouraged many homebuyers who were watching and waiting to make purchases in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with transactions in June outperforming the monthly average figure of the first quarter.

A Beijing-based property broker told the Global Times on Monday that current daily trade volume in previously owned properties in Beijing has surpassed the benchmark of 500 after the new policy was released on June 26, while the previous daily trade volume was around 100 to 200.

Data from property brokerage company Lianjia showed that Beijing's daily trade volume in properties on Sunday hit 602, and the monthly volume in June hit 9,270.

The improving data echoed earlier comments by officials with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

On June 17, NBS spokesperson Liu Aihua told a press conference that positive developments "are taking place" in China's property market, with the decline in sales of new homes narrowing in the first five months.

Liu said that since mid-May, with the further optimization of real estate policies by relevant departments and regions, the real estate market has shown some positive momentum but noted that the property market is still in a transitional phase, and the full impact of the policies has yet to be realized.

On May 17, China announced a series of measures to prop up the real estate market by relaxing down payments and cutting housing loan interest rates and provident fund loan interest rates in what industry insiders described as an "unprecedented" move of the past few decades.

A State Council executive meeting on June 7 further noted that for the property sector, new changes in the supply-and-demand relationship need to be recognized fully and the people's new expectations for quality housing need to be addressed. Work will be done to implement existing policies effectively, alongside the continued study of new strategies to stabilize the market and reduce its inventory.

The meeting noted that the government will accelerate its formation of a new property sector development model and improve the housing supply system that includes both commercial homes and affordable housing.

Zhou Maohua, an economist at China Everbright Bank, told the Global Times on Monday that in the coming months, the supportive policies for the real estate sector will gradually take effect as tailored policies are implemented to fit the circumstances in individual cities to shore up confidence and foster an industry-wide recovery. Zhou noted that time is needed before a rebalance in supply and demand and a recovery can take place.