Market recovery: Prices slightly up, over 60% of transactions below 3 million

A school-district home in a certain area of Dongcheng District, Beijing Photography for this edition: Zhang Da, Chen Yukun, Li Yingquan, Wu Jiaming, TuChong Creative/Provided photo

Securities Times reporter Zhang Da

The secondary housing market in Beijing saw a clear increase in transaction volume in March just passed. Data from the Zhongyuan Real Estate Research Institute shows that in March, Beijing’s secondary residential contract-registration volume reached 19,886 units, up 144.6% month-on-month and up 3.4% year-on-year, the highest level in the past 15 months.

Multiple real-estate agency professionals interviewed by Securities Times reporters said that recently, the rebound in Beijing’s secondary home transactions has been accompanied by a noticeably shortened selling cycle, while prices have inched up slightly.

“Recently, the whole of Beijing has rebounded, and transaction volumes are much higher. Many communities are currently in a shortage-of-listings state.” A staff member at the Tongzhou District branch of a large real-estate agency in Beijing told Securities Times reporters, “Those relatively cheap and good properties were sold out earlier. Now, if a newly listed home has a normal floor plan—not a particularly low-floor unit and not a particularly poor layout—then even if its price is just slightly higher than the previous成交价 by a little bit, say by tens of thousands (100,000s) more, it can still be sold quickly.”

A staff member at a large real-estate agency’s Dongcheng District branch in Beijing told Securities Times reporters that recently, school-district homes have had relatively many transactions.

“We signed 17 or 18 deals in March, which is double compared with before.” Another agency’s staff member from a Fengtai District branch told Securities Times reporters that recently there have been more clients, transactions have rebounded, and the total price per home has risen only about 100,000 to 200,000.

Regarding March’s performance in Beijing’s secondary housing market, Leng Hui, an analyst at the Beike (Lianjia) Research Institute, said in an interview with Securities Times reporters that it is “very good.” In terms of transaction volume, it is the highest level in the past 15 months. In terms of prices, overall they have remained steady, with a slight uptick compared with the earlier part of the year, and the trend of stabilizing and reversing the decline has continued positively.

Our house (Wo Ai Wo Jia) Research Institute pointed out that on March 31, Beijing’s single-day contract-registration volume reached 1,422 units, the highest new daily成交 level in nearly three years since April 2023, directly showing the recovery of Beijing’s secondary housing market. More importantly, this round of rebound has not only achieved steady growth in volume, but prices have also moved in a favorable direction at the same time. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in February, Beijing’s secondary residential price index rose 0.3% month-on-month, becoming the first to stop falling and stabilize. From the transaction data of Our house, in March Beijing’s secondary residential transaction price per unit continued the stable trend of February, forming a favorable recovery pattern of “volume up and prices steady.”

As for the reasons behind the rebound in Beijing’s housing market in March, Leng Hui believes there are mainly two aspects: on the one hand, seasonal factors—every year after the Spring Festival, this period is a golden window for the market to rebound quickly, commonly known as the “Little Spring” (small positive seasonal upturn). On the other hand, policy support—various policy optimization measures introduced in late December last year (for example, loosening purchase restrictions, optimizing second-home mortgage conditions, and lowering the VAT rate, etc.) effectively boosted market confidence and also “unlocked” some housing demand. These newly added demands gradually turned into actual transactions by March.

A concentrated move by first-time, end-user demand groups into the market has become an important support for this “Little Spring”行情. Data from Our house shows that in March, the transaction volume of secondary homes priced below 3 million yuan accounted for 66.3% of all secondary home transactions in the same period, up 19.1% year-on-year, with lower-total-price listings becoming the main force in transactions.

Whether Beijing’s “Little Spring” in the secondary housing market can be sustained: Zhang Dawei, chief analyst at Zhongyuan Real Estate, believes that from the perspective of future trends, after the “Little Spring” in March, transactions may experience an inertia-based pullback in April and May, and the subsequent market trajectory will still depend on policy trends.

Looking ahead, Our house Research Institute believes that the real-estate market has gone through deep adjustments over the past few years. Under the Central Government’s deployment to “focus on stabilizing the real-estate market,” it has already begun to move into a new stage. As Beijing is a first-tier city with solid underlying fundamentals, the “stop falling and recover”行情 is expected to continue, helping Beijing’s housing market achieve steady and healthy development.

(Editor: Liu Chang ）

     【Disclaimer】This article only represents the author’s personal views and is not related to Hexun.com. The Hexun website maintains a neutral stance toward the statements and judgments of opinions made in the text, and provides no explicit or implied guarantees regarding the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the information contained herein. Readers are advised to use this information only for reference and to bear all responsibility themselves. Email: news_center@staff.hexun.com