Securities Times reporter Zhang Da
The report released by Beike Research Institute today pointed out that although the transaction volume of second-hand houses in the first two months was not as high as the same period last year, the market recovery momentum is good, with some cities having transaction volumes exceeding the same period last year, and some cities and product prices stopping falling or even slightly rising. Meanwhile, the number of homebuyers this year is comparable to last year, but there has been a decrease in new listings, which is beneficial for improving the supply and demand relationship in the market in the future.
According to the monitoring data of the second-hand housing market of Beike Research Institute, due to last year's special high base, the transaction volume of second-hand housing in Beike's 50 key cities decreased year-on-year from January to February this year, but increased significantly by 28.5% compared to the same period in 2022. From the perspective of cities, the growth of transactions in second tier cities is particularly impressive. From January to February, the cumulative transaction volume of second-hand shell houses in cities such as Hangzhou, Xuzhou, Huizhou, Quanzhou, and Harbin has exceeded the same period last year. In the first two weeks of March, the transaction volume of second-hand shell houses in cities such as Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hefei, Changsha, Lanzhou, Dalian, Changzhou, Luoyang, and Jiaxing exceeded the same period last year.
Beike Research Institute believes that the transaction volume and price of second-hand houses in second tier, third and fourth tier cities have significantly recovered, indicating that the policy optimization implemented in these cities has a positive effect on the recovery of market transactions.
From the perspective of demand structure, according to customer demand research conducted by Beike Research Institute, the proportion of first-time homebuyers has significantly increased in the past three quarters.
Beike Research Institute believes that the entry of essential demand into the market is a positive signal of market improvement. The reasons for the entry of first-time buyers into the market are, on the one hand, the continuous implementation of policies such as the reduction of mortgage interest rates, optimization of housing provident fund policies, reduction of transaction taxes and fees, and implementation of housing purchase subsidies; On the other hand, after a certain degree of reduction in housing prices, the threshold for consumers to purchase a house and the cost of purchasing a house have further decreased, making the volume of the demand group extremely enter the market.
The data from Beike Research Institute also shows that there is a marginal recovery in the trend of price decline caused by the entry of demand into the market. According to housing classification statistics, the prices of low priced housing in cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen have stopped falling, while the prices of essential housing in Shanghai have seen consecutive month on month increases for two consecutive months.
Beike Research Institute believes that stopping the price decline has a good driving effect on the sustained recovery of market demand confidence. The month on month decline in the second-hand housing price index of Beike in February narrowed from -1.3% in January to -0.3%.
Furthermore, from the perspective of supply and demand structure, the new supply and demand in the second-hand housing market this year are different from previous years. According to data statistics on the number of second-hand housing listings and new listings in 50 key cities on the Shell platform, the number of new listings in the first two weeks of March was basically the same as last year, but the number of new listings decreased by 11% compared to last year. This trend is conducive to the market moving towards a new equilibrium.
Beike Research Institute believes that in the later stage, with the encouragement of further optimizing real estate regulation policies in various regions, the second-hand housing market will "trade price for quantity", and the market size can maintain steady growth in the first half of the year, playing a positive driving role in the new housing and land markets. Beike Research Institute suggests further reducing mortgage interest rates, especially for second home mortgages, to further consolidate the foundation of a positive market.