China's housing market rebounds with favorable policies: expert

(ECNS) -- Data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed that in February 2023, the number of cities with a month-on-month increase in sales prices of commercial residential properties among the 70 large and medium-sized cities in China continued to rise.

The data has brought greater market confidence. Experts believe that this is a positive signal for China's real estate industry.

In February, prices of new houses in first-tier cities, second-tier cities, and third-tier cities rose by 0.2 percent, 0.4 percent, and 0.3 percent respectively compared to the previous month.

"This is the first time since September 2021 that the price index of new houses in different kinds of cities has increased on a month-on-month basis, which indicates that with the favorable policies at the national and local levels, housing prices in various regions are generally stopped declining," said Yan Yuejin, director of the research institute of China Real Estate Information Corp (CRIC)

In February, the month-on-month increase in second-hand housing prices in first-tier cities was 0.7 percent, an increase of 0.3 percentage points from the previous month. The figure in second-tier cities turned into a 0.1 percent increase from the 0.3 percent decrease last month, and the decrease in the third-tier cities stopped this month.

"The second-hand housing price index has also turned upward for the first time after a continuous decline for 18 months. Recently, the transactions of some cities' second-hand houses have been very good, and even better than the first-hand housing market," Yan believes.

Zhang Bo, director of the 58 Anjuke Research Institute, believes that the rebound momentum in China's housing market is clear, and market confidence is constantly increasing with favorable policies.