On September 18, at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released a key figure: in the first eight months of this year, the proportion of second-hand housing transactions nationwide reached 52%, exceeding 50%. Official definition: Real estate has officially entered the stock era.
On the same day, real estate stocks collectively rose sharply. Vanke A, Xincheng Holdings, and Greenland Holdings hit their daily limits, and the A-share real estate index closed up 3.34%. Behind this round of increases are both favorable policies and fundamentals: on the policy side, the top-level setting of the new real estate model has stabilized institutional expectations; on the fundamental side, the sales price of commercial housing in first-tier cities increased month-on-month in August, while the month-on-month decline in second- and third-tier cities generally narrowed. The excitement in the market is obviously not just the “policy warm wind”, but the logical switch marked by 52% – the core narrative of China’s property market is shifting from “building new houses” to “making good use of houses”.
Many people panicked when they saw “the sales area of new homes dropped by 12.1% year-on-year.” However, adding up the first and second-hand houses, the total transaction area from January to August was approximately 1.092 billion square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 0.6%. The numbers are almost flat.
what does that mean? The demand has not disappeared, but the proportion of second-hand home transactions is higher than that of new homes. The total market volume is stable, but what changes is the structure. New houses are increasingly focused on improvement needs. Large-area, low-density, pure improvement products are still there, but the scale is naturally smaller.
This change of track is not just a simple switch in the transaction structure, but also a systematic reshaping of the entire housing system and industry business model.
For the first time, the press conference used the “1234” framework to systematically explain the new model of real estate development. This system design is the underlying rules tailor-made for the stock era. “1” is to firmly grasp the basic point of letting the people live in peace and achieve a higher level of housing; “2” is to improve the two systems of security and market to form a supply pattern with clear positioning, complementary functions, and effectively meet residents’ housing needs; “3” is to focus on projects Focusing on the three systems of the project company system, the sponsoring bank system and the existing house sales system, we will reform and improve the basic real estate system; “4” is to promote the linkage of the four elements of “people, housing, land and money”, realize the decision-making of houses by people, the land by houses, and the money by houses, and promote the rational allocation of factors.
In the past two decades or so, the real estate development chain has been “land acquisition-starting construction-pre-sales-selling houses”. Local governments rely on land transfers, real estate companies rely on high turnover, and home buyers rely on expectations. Now this chain is being switched: local governments have to adapt to the contraction of land finance, real estate companies have to shift to “good houses” and stock operations, and ordinary people have to re-understand “buying a house” – it is becoming more and more like bulk consumption, rather than a sure-profit investment.
The research report of Huatai Securities puts it directly: the industry will shift from “high leverage and high turnover capital driven” to “quality and operation driven management”. The advancement of the existing home sales system is accelerating this process. The sales of existing homes means that the industry threshold will inevitably increase, which will eliminate some companies, but it may also force healthier product competition.
In other words, when real estate stocks surged on September 18, what the market cheered was probably not that “policies are about to be relaxed,” but that “the rules of the game are finally clear.” For the real estate sector, the stability of institutional expectations itself is an important driving force for valuation restoration.
52% is more like a road sign, marking the historic transition of real estate from incremental expansion to stock quality improvement.
For ordinary people, this means that the questions that need to be asked when buying a house have changed: it is no longer just “will the price rise”, but “do I feel comfortable living in this house and will it be easy to sell in the future?” For the industry, this means that the way to survive has changed: not to compete with who can build it faster, but to compete with who can build it well and operate it well.
The property market has not receded, but has “changed tracks.”
City Cape of Good Hope commentator Duan Wenping
Editor Chen Li
