In the first half of the year, the property market was regulated more than 300 times. Will it be relaxed in the future？ The report says so.
Economic Daily-China Economic Net, Beijing, July 13 (Reporter Ma Changyan) In the first half of this year, the national real estate regulation and control policies have exceeded 300 times. How will the real estate regulation and control go in the second half of this year? Will the real estate regulation be relaxed in order to further stimulate economic recovery in the future? On July 9, China Renmin University China Macroeconomic Forum released a special report, pointing out that with the epidemic basically under control, all walks of life have resumed production and work in an all-round way, the real estate market is recovering rapidly, and the super-differentiation pattern has been further strengthened. Under the super-differentiated market structure, structural risks are more prominent, and the determination of regulation and control and the requirements for accuracy are further improved. In the future, China’s real estate market industry will show the characteristics of "super-differentiation of the market and firm regulation of policies" for a long time.
The market is recovering well.
Qin Hong, a senior researcher at the National Development and Strategy Institute of Renmin University of China, a major member of the China Macroeconomic Forum (CMF) and former director of the Policy Research Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, released a special report on CMF China’s macroeconomics on behalf of the forum. Qin Hong pointed out that China’s real estate market is recovering rapidly after the epidemic, and the performance of relevant indicators is relatively good.
The cumulative year-on-year decline in the transaction scale of new houses continued to narrow, and prices rose steadily. In terms of transaction volume, from January to April, the national real estate sales area decreased by 19% and the sales volume decreased by 13%, but the decline in sales area narrowed by 7 percentage points compared with that in January-March. The transaction scale of urban commercial housing continued to improve, and the transaction scale of some cities in May has achieved positive growth year-on-year. In terms of price, according to the 100-city price index of the Central Finger Research Institute, the price of new residential buildings in 100 cities increased by 0.31% in May, and increased by 0.74% from January to May, which was 0.34 percentage points lower than the same period of last year. The cumulative increase was still the lowest in the same period of the past five years, and the price showed the characteristics of steady and rising.
The land market is shrinking in volume and rising in price, and continues to heat up. From January to May, the supply and demand scale of residential land in 300 cities nationwide decreased year-on-year. Among them, the supply and demand of residential land in first-tier cities have increased significantly, and the transaction scale of second-tier and third-and fourth-tier cities has declined. The heat of the land market has obviously increased, and the average floor price and premium rate have reached a stage high. From January to May, the average floor price of homestead transactions increased by 20.9% year-on-year.
The growth rate of real estate development investment is better than that of fixed assets investment and infrastructure investment. According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the national fixed asset investment (excluding farmers) decreased by 10.3% from January to April, of which infrastructure investment decreased by 11.8%, manufacturing investment decreased by 18.8% and real estate development investment decreased by 3.3%. Overall, the resilience of the real estate investment side still exists.
Show a pattern of super differentiation
"After the epidemic, differentiation is not enough to describe the changes in the real estate market, and there has been a pattern of super differentiation in the real estate market." Qin Hong said.
The report shows that after more than 20 years of development after the reform of the urban housing system, the sales scale of the real estate market has increased from 100 million square meters in 1998 to 1.7 billion square meters in 2019, an increase of 16 times. At the same time of the total growth, the real estate market has been divided, and the market share of enterprises, financing costs, land reserve pattern, corporate profitability and real estate markets in different cities have all been divided. Under the epidemic, this differentiation is further intensified.
In terms of real estate enterprises, the intensification of differentiation appeared in 2015. From 2016 to 2019, the proportion of sales of the top 100 enterprises increased by 24.8% in four years, which is increasing at an average annual rate of 6%. Under the influence of the epidemic, the sales area and sales volume of the national real estate market were still negative in the first half of the year, but the threshold value of the top three real estate enterprises increased by 8.85 points, and that of the top ten real estate enterprises increased by 5.2 percentage points.
From the perspective of enterprise financing scale, the financing scale of overseas debt and credit debt of the top 30 real estate development enterprises accounted for 64% of the top 100 enterprises in the first half of this year; From the perspective of financing cost, taking the cost of credit bonds issued by real estate enterprises in April as an example, the financing cost of enterprises with the lowest cost and enterprises with the highest cost is five times worse; Judging from the land market, the number of land acquired by the top 30 real estate enterprises in the first half of this year accounted for 85% of the top 50 enterprises. The larger the enterprise scale, the lower the floor land price; The smaller the enterprise scale, the higher the floor land price. There is also a very obvious gap in the cost of land acquisition for enterprises.
There are also obvious differences in the performance of real estate market in different cities. From the perspective of cities, the land acquisition of the top 100 real estate enterprises in the first half of this year was mainly concentrated in five urban agglomerations, accounting for 60% of the land acquisition scale, of which one urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta accounted for 30% of the land acquisition scale of the top 100 enterprises. Judging from housing prices, more than half of the top 20 cities in the first half of this year are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region. Not only between cities, but also within cities. In addition, there is super differentiation between residential real estate and commercial real estate, real estate demand in different lots and inventory of different housing enterprises.
Firmly control the policy direction.
In order to promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market, since the beginning of this year, the central government has repeatedly set the tone for the real estate policy. In April, the the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee meeting mentioned that "houses should be used for living, not for speculation, so as to promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market". In May, the government work report emphasized that "the house should be used for living, not for speculation, so as to promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market."
According to the statistics of the Central Plains Real Estate Research Center, the number of policies issued nationwide to stabilize the property market in the first half of this year was 304, up 21% year-on-year, setting a new historical record for the number of regulation in half a year. From January to April this year, the number of real estate regulation and control reached 238. With the stability of the real estate market, the number of real estate regulation and control decreased significantly, 35 times in May and 31 times in June.
The report pointed out that maintaining the stability of housing prices is crucial to China’s economic and social stability and financial security. In the medium and long term, China’s current housing prices are at a high level, and the fundamental contradiction in the real estate market has not been substantially resolved. The super differentiation of the real estate market makes it more difficult for real estate to regulate and deal with risks.
In this context, the report believes that the real estate market still needs to be firmly regulated in the future, and it is necessary to maintain "five invariants" in the direction of policy. First, the strategic positioning of "housing and not speculating" remains unchanged. The key to the policy is the word "speculation" to prevent the rebound of real estate speculation. Second, the supply system of "renting and selling at the same time" remains unchanged. The key to the policy is the word "rent" to develop the housing rental market. Third, the regulation mechanism of "policy by city" remains unchanged. The key to the policy is the word "city", and the city government takes overall responsibility for the stability of the local real estate market. The fourth is to achieve the goal of "three stabilities". The key to the policy is "stability" to prevent the market from ups and downs. Fifth, the real estate financial policy remained stable. The real estate market has always been highly sensitive to monetary policy, and the key to the policy is to stabilize the mortgage interest rate.
In view of the development status of China’s real estate market, Qin Hong put forward five suggestions on behalf of the forum research group: First, we should still take the goal of stabilizing housing prices, take measures according to the city, and grasp the pace of real estate development. The second is to coordinate the development and regulation of real estate with the metropolitan area as the scope. The third is to guide the transformation and upgrading of the real estate industry with urban renewal as the starting point. The fourth is to control risks as the bottom line and reserve policies and measures for various camera decisions. Fifth, systematic market monitoring is carried out with indicators such as quantity, price and finance as the core.