China Archives - Amora Escapes

China Must Rethink Its Reliance on Property Sales to See Real Growth

Aaron Maxwell — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:06:15 +0000

The small eastern city of Zibo in Shandong province is experiencing an outdoor barbecue craze.

People from all over China are coming here to taste its lamb skewers, which have become legendary via social media.

It’s quite a raucous experience and certainly not for the faint-hearted.

The street is packed, you sit on little plastic chairs, drink beer and wrap chunks of meat with spring onion on the local flatbread while karaoke songs pump out in all directions.

On the face of it, these crowds appear to show an economy rebounding strongly from the coronavirus emergency – but according to economists that’s not the case.

Rather, they say, this is an example of people choosing a cheap, tasty, option at a time of great pressure on household incomes.

Zibo attracts people from all over China, who come for the lamb skewers and karaoke

A man sitting with his shirt off tells us this is the perfect spot to enjoy a hot summer night with his family, and that this type of fun has a price tag to match the moment.

“This place is great for ordinary people,” he says. “Recently, it’s been hard to make money but still easy to spend it. After three years of Covid, the economy is only slowly recovering.”

University graduates are being hit especially hard by China’s economic doldrums, with youth unemployment hovering at or above 20%.

Some students are feeling nervous about their futures.

“Yes, I’m worried,” says one woman who’ll soon graduate. “There’s a lot of competition. It’s hard to find a job. All my classmates feel the same pressure.”

For those who have jobs, a big reason for their reluctance to spend big is economic security.

They’re concerned about the potential to join the ranks of the unemployed, and their household’s largest single investment is, in many cases, no longer worth what they thought it would be.

The real estate sector is under great stress in China.

New residential blocks in Qingdao sit unfinished or barely occupied

To see this first-hand, we drive a few hours east of Zibo to the outskirts of a much larger city, Qingdao.

Here, a property explosion hasn’t matched real demand from buyers or renters, and the result has been huge housing estates built with very few residents in them.

A woman is selling cold noodles from a portable stand outside her housing complex where she has few neighbours.

A few years ago, her husband bought a flat here after moving to Qingdao to give their child a better start because they heard the schools would be good.

I ask her if she’s worried about the value of her home collapsing.

“Of course I’m worried,” she says. “But what can I do?”

Nearby a couple who are street cleaners have stopped for lunch. They point to the huge estate behind them and say that nobody lives there.

Across the road there is a small forest of concrete towers without paint, without windows and with window frames now looking the worse for wear, having been exposed to the elements.

The property explosion in Qingdao has outpaced demand from buyers and renters

“Construction just stopped there one day last year,” the man says.

According to his wife, the entire suburb is pretty dead. “There’s nothing here. There’s no petrol station. You have to go a long way for fuel. It’s really not convenient to live here,” she says.

There had been hope that this region would take off after the city hosted a major political meeting, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation Summit, and China’s leader Xi Jinping gave it his personal stamp of approval as a place to invest and do business, potentially hosting international expos and the like.

But the factories, start-ups and other companies that would supposedly employ those who bought property here have been few.

According to a local real estate agent, sales volumes have halved in the area in recent years.

“Prices are down because the market is saturated,” she says. “Too many homes were built and it’s hard to sell them.”

We put up a drone to get a bird’s eye view and it looks even worse than at ground level.

Entire new housing estates where work has stopped can be found in all directions. Those that are finished don’t have much sign of life in them.

A boom in real estate in China has pushed city house prices out of reach for many families

What’s more, this supply and demand problem isn’t unique to this area. It isn’t even unique to this city. In province after province across China, evidence pointing to the danger of a property bubble is easy to find.

One reason for rampant real estate speculation in this country has been a lack of other options for investment. But the boom in real estate drove house prices out of the reach of ordinary families in many big cities. The government response was to cap the number of flats any person could buy.

It was a genuine attempt at an egalitarian reform, but pressure is now coming to reverse this. In Qingdao, such measures have already been eased, in an attempt to stimulate its stalled real estate market.

The challenge for Chinese policymakers is to find a way to wean this economy off such a heavy reliance on property sales to generate growth and business confidence.

Economists like Harry Murphy Cruise, from Moody’s Analytics, think China is facing significant problems.

“China’s economy is in desperate need of rebalancing,” he tells the BBC from Australia. “It’s had that massive period of growth over the last two or three decades from big infrastructure building, from a massive uptick in the property market that is actually not a sustainable growth driver going forward.

“Look around the world, developed economies need households as a key driver of economic growth, and that is just not what China has at the moment.”

The Chinese government is considering ways to promote more spending by individuals and by businesses from interest rate cuts to cash handouts.

But the problem is sentiment.

People will feel more secure when there are more jobs. Businesses need to invest to create more jobs, but they are reluctant to do so while customers are so insecure.

As Harry Murphy Cruise puts it: “It’s sort of like the chicken and the egg. You can’t have that uptick in the economy unless you have business spending. They’re not spending until they see that uptick. So, there’s a stalemate that’s really holding back a key portion of the economy.”

Then there’s the chance that all of this will bleed into global trade.

Meanwhile, tourism along Qingdao’s famous coastline appears to be picking up

China is big. What happens to the world’s second largest economy turns ripples into waves.

Reduced manufacturing here – off the back of weak international demand – has resulted in fewer exports, fewer Chinese-made goods available worldwide and less business activity in Asia’s mega factory. Then the subsequent slower consumption in China means fewer imports of other countries’ products.

The headache for the Chinese government is that it may have to choose whether to go for a short-term stimulus fix, which would delay the rebalancing it will eventually need to face, or whether to absorb more immediate pain and bring on the long-term solution more quickly.

Naturally, there are almost certainly those in Beijing’s upper echelons of power considering some sort of middle path, starting with a milder boost to stabilise the economy, then considering the larger problems at hand.

Because they know that, once negative sentiment sets in, it can be hard to turn around.

Yet if you want to feel optimistic about Qingdao, and about life, you go to the beach. Tourism along its famous coastline does seem to be picking up.

There’s laughter, sandcastle construction and everyone – whether they’re a captain of industry or a truck driver – is enjoying the great embrace of the ocean.

Whether it matches reality or not, here you almost can’t help but feel that, despite everything, the future still has good things in store.

Source : BBC

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Yanlord Reports 26.1 Billion Yuan in Property Presales for First 9 Months of 2023

Julian Berry — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:05:31 +0000

CHINESE property developer Yanlord Land Group recorded 26.1 billion yuan (S$4.8 billion) in total contracted presales from residential units, commercial units and car parks for the first nine months of the year.

The presales were for a contracted gross floor area of about 1.02 million square metres (sq m) and were 51.7 per cent lower than presales for the year ago period, the group said in a bourse filing on Tuesday (Oct 10).

Presales include those by the group, its joint ventures and associates.

Yanlord Land’s total contracted presales for September was down by 83.2 per cent to 1.6 billion yuan for a contracted gross floor area of 67,835 sq m.

In its unaudited key operating figures for the nine months ended Sep 30, Yanlord Land said it has approximately 2.6 billion yuan of subscription sales, which are expected to be turned into contracted presales in the coming months.

Five cities in China – Nanjing, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Jinan and Tianjin – accounted for about 59.5 per cent of total contracted presales for the first nine months of the year.

For the first six months of 2023, Yanlord Land posted a net profit of approximately one billion yuan for the half year ended June 2023, down 20 per cent from the 1.4 billion yuan a year ago.

Property prices in China have slumped amid worsening business sentiment as property giants Country Garden face potential debt default and Evergrande Group aims to restructure US$22.7 billion of offshore debt.

Source : TheBusinessTimes

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Property Tax Not on Horizon, but Speculation Unlikely

Leon Clarke — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:05:30 +0000

When homebuyers are active, property tax is one factor that weighs heavily on their mind. So, it came as little surprise when all eyes turned to a recent legislative plan that made no mention of property tax.

Some in the housing market thought the much-discussed property tax would not be levied nationwide in the near future. This in turn sparked speculation. Could people buy homes for investment purposes?

But then, when I chatted with my friends to find out, it quickly became clear that homebuyers are becoming rational. For them, it seems, a home is a place to live in, not something to be bought just to resell later for a tidy profit.

“I’d not buy a property purely for investment, even if there is no tax. But I may buy a small flat for my family to live more comfortably and conveniently,” said a friend of mine whose family currently live in a leased apartment close to her son’s middle school.

“Since property prices are unlikely to rise substantially, I think the era of buying properties purely for investment purposes is now history. The possible property tax would only be considered in case of families buying or exchanging homes for living concerns,” said another friend who has no plan to buy any residential property in the near future.

This kind of conversations came after the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress, the nation’s top legislature, did not include property tax in its recent legislative plan. It is widely believed this special taxation will not enter legislative process at least before 2025, according to a report in 21st Century Business Herald.

James Macdonald, head and senior director of Savills China research, said the exclusion of real estate tax legislation from the 14th National People’s Congress legislative plan signifies a postponement rather than a cancellation of the legislative process.

The introduction of property tax has faced delays on multiple occasions in the past, with the most recent (perceived) delay likely being attributed to the current market conditions, where imposing additional taxes or costs might not be advisable.

However, looking to the future, property taxes hold the potential to offer substantial benefits. They can establish a dependable revenue stream for local governments, encourage responsible land use and enhance funding for essential local services, said Macdonald.

Chen Sheng, president of the China Real Estate Data Academy, said now is probably not the best time to introduce property tax, given the overall market condition and the mounting pressures developers are facing. Any tax now may cause market fluctuations.

“I think legislative procedures for property tax may be more likely when developers’ operations are stabilized, and the market sees an uptrend, or at least recovers to a stable condition,” Chen said.

The main purpose of levying real estate tax is to prevent investment speculation, but in the current market situation, the principle of “houses are for living in and not for speculative investment” still applies. So, whether the relevant legislation appears in the plan or not, this will not change the real estate fundamentals, said Shaun Brodie, head of research on the China market with Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm.

The ongoing real estate policy adjustments and optimization, such as relaxing housing loans, reducing interest rates for first homes and eliminating restrictions on purchases and sales, are intended to gradually meet residents’ needs for essential housing and promote the steady and healthy development of the real estate market, Brodie said.

Source : ChinaDaily

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China Property Stocks Fall 20% From May High as Concerns Linger

Sean Potter — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 08:09:35 +0000

China’s property stocks entered a technical bear market over concerns that Beijing’s efforts to bolster the sector are too small to end the rout.

A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of Chinese developer shares fell 3.3% on Thursday, extending losses from a mid-May high to almost 21%. Sunac China Holdings Ltd. was the biggest laggard with a slump of 12%, while CIFI Holdings Group Co. sank 8.4%.

Real estate stocks have retreated amid skepticism over a broad support package unveiled by the central government on May 17. While investors initially cheered the policies, which include lower down-payment requirements for homebuyers, they have since questioned how useful they will be in reviving demand and addressing a housing inventory glut.

There’s also the concern about the size of the measures. Officials have said that a central bank program would incentivize bank loans worth 500 billion yuan ($69 billion), but that’s a small fraction of the value of China’s vacant apartments.

”The latest sales data show there’s not much improvement in property fundamentals,” said Jeff Zhang, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. “We may need to wait until the end of year to see a narrowing of declines or a rise in monthly sales as a result of the government’s rescue package.”

New-home sales at the 100 biggest real estate companies dropped 33.6% from a year earlier in May, easing from a 45% decline in April, China Real Estate Information Corp. data showed. While the slight month-on-month pickup buoyed property shares earlier this week, worries over the long-term outlook later pushed investors to take profits.

“We only do short-term investment in Chinese property stocks as the industry’s fundamentals are still weak,” said Joy Young, the founder of Shenzhen Infinite Fund Management Co.

As some investors wait for a clearer sales-recovery picture, others are seeking clues on major policy shifts that may be unveiled at the Third Plenary Session in July.

Beijing will likely follow other cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen in relaxing housing curbs, according to John Lam, an analyst at UBS Group AG. Other possible measures may focus on destocking, he added.

Morningstar’s Zhang expects the Chinese government to be more active on property supports until July’s plenum, “but the room for policy adjustments may be smaller than before, as the May rescue package is already very forceful.”

Source: Bloomberg

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China’s Big Property Market Problem Will Take at Least 4 to 6 Years to Resolve

Jeffery Blair — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 10:52:32 +0000

BEIJING — China has a big problem within real estate that will take years to resolve, according to analysis from Oxford Economics lead economist Louise Loo.

Looking at nationwide data — whether based on official estimates of unsold inventory or the construction-to-sales ratio — Loo found it will take at least four to six years for real estate developers in China to complete unfinished residential properties.

That means efforts to boost funding to developers and other efforts to resolve China’s property market problems don’t directly address the bigger issue of uncompleted homes.

“However one slices the data, the existing excess supply in the market is likely to take at least another four years to unwind, absent a meaningful pickup in demand,” Loo said in a report Tuesday.

“Increasing supply coming from secondary market transactions – as households, worried about depleting profits from price declines, sell their second or third homes – is an additional drag to this process,” she said, noting that “developers’ inventory is far too large for households to absorb quickly.”

Apartment homes are typically sold ahead of completion in China, making it critical that developers finish constructing the houses if they are to sell more.

But financing struggles and other issues have meant developers have had to delay home delivery times — discouraging future home sales.

On the extreme end, residential construction in the relatively poor province of Guizhou could take well over 20 years to complete, Loo said in an email, while it will likely take at least 10 years in several other provinces such as Jiangxi and Hebei.

Nomura last month estimated the size of unfinished, pre-sold homes in China is about 20 times the size of property developer Country Garden as of the end of 2022.

Real estate and related sectors have accounted for about a fifth to one-fourth of China’s economy.

Ratings agency Moody’s said late Tuesday it expects that share to decline, in-line with Chinese government objectives. However, the firm pointed out the resulting drop in land sales means local governments may face financial strain if they are unable to offset what’s been a driver of more than a third of revenue.

That means Beijing may need to step in, posing “downside risks to China’s fiscal, economic and institutional strength,” Moody’s said. It downgraded its outlook on China’s government credit ratings to negative from stable.

Moody’s expects China’s growth domestic product to slow to 4% growth in 2024 and 2025 and average 3.8% a year from 2026 to 2030. The firm maintained an “A1” long-term rating on China’s sovereign bonds.

Spillover?

Despite persistent property market troubles, Oxford Economics’ Loo doesn’t expect significant spillover to the rest of the economy.

“We think China’s housing downturn will tread a different path than that of the US, Spain, or Ireland 10-15 years ago, and is unlikely to trigger a broader financial crisis,” she said.

In those situations, falling house prices, mortgage failures and bank lending were interlinked, Loo said, pointing out the difference in China: the greater role of policy, state-controlled banks and more stringent mortgage terms.

Other analysts also expect China’s economy will take its own path.

“We do see some similarities between China’s situation and the economic stagnation in Japan after the latter’s property bubble burst in 1991,” S&P Global Ratings said in a report Monday. “However, S&P Global Ratings believes China can avert this outcome, helped by regulatory action and the strength of its banking and corporate sectors.”

Source : CNBC

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Property Woes Loom Large Over China’s 2024 Outlook: Economist

Victor Lyons — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 01:13:09 +0000

Sustained property woes will continue to be the biggest drag on the world’s second-largest economy next year, with potential buyers hesitant to purchase and developers struggling for cash, according to a prominent economist.

“The real estate sector does show some signs of stabilising, but has it bottomed out? I don’t think we can make such a conclusion right away,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Japanese investment bank Nomura, said in Beijing on Saturday.

Lu said that with delayed delivery of roughly 20 million presold homes – mostly in lower-tier cities where many private developers have been ensnared – there was a “negative feedback loop” between a public reluctance to buy new homes and a lack of cash among developers to build homes.

It also led to lower income for local governments, which rely heavily on land sales revenue, which in turn meant pay cuts for public sector workers and further drop in new home purchases, he added.

“Without cleaning up the mess [from undelivered presold homes], the real recovery of the property sector still faces a huge obstacle,” Lu said.

Beijing has implemented a series of stimulus measures to prevent the property market from further falls in the second half of the year, but sales have remained sluggish and prices dropped.

Without power from the traditional growth engine, some emerging economic drivers might also come to a standstill in 2024, including the investment boom in the new energy sector and the pent-up demand in the domestic service sector, Lu said.

“The rebound of consumption in the travel and catering sectors may slow down notably, because of the fading of a low base,” he said.

Investment in green energy industrial chains such as solar panels and electric vehicles – which were among the few export bright spots this year – might slow due to overcapacity and rising trade barriers in key overseas markets such as Europe, Lu added.

And weakening external demand as well as lasting geopolitical tensions would further weigh on China’s export sector and foreign investment, he said.

Despite the worsening global slowdown, falling yields in developed economies and a weaker dollar could give Beijing more space to ramp up its fiscal spending, with funding either from markets or its own central bank, according to Lu.

“Weak external demand also limits inflation and leaves more room for the [People’s Bank of China’s] money-printing, which might be essential for rescuing many projects left unfinished by developers,” he said.

He added that neither commercial banks nor local governments had the ability to put an end to the property crisis.

To save the economy, “first, the real estate sector is critical. Second delivery of presold homes is critical. Third, it should be financed by the central government.”

Source : SCMP

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Country Garden’s Chair Says Confident in Repairing Balance Sheet

Tyrone Santiago — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 01:06:31 +0000

(Bloomberg) — Country Garden Holdings Co.’s Chair Yang Huiyan says she is “very confident” the company can repair its balance sheet and pledged the founding family’s support for the ailing Chinese property giant.

The path to fix the balance sheet is “very clear and can be achieved,” Yang said at a monthly management meeting held Friday, according to a statement on the developer’s WeChat account. Country Garden “will strive to become a model for the quick recovery” of distressed companies, she added.

Country Garden’s debt struggles have epitomized the property crisis engulfing the country’s economy. The remarks come as China introduces new measures to put a floor under a property market that’s been roiled since the introduction of measures three years ago aimed at cutting the industry’s reliance on debt.

The developer, a poster child of China’s property crisis, defaulted in October for the first time on dollar bonds, and will face a test next week to avoid the same fate on a local note — an outcome that a regulator signaled it’s trying to avoid.

Yang said that Country Garden can maintain “positive assets” for the next ten years “as long as our inventory assets are sold normally.”

Separately, the company said in the statement that it will have three tasks over the next 12 months: ensuring delivery, operation, and credit and it expects to deliver more than 400,000 units in 2024.

Source : BNNBloomberg

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Wealthy Chinese Firms Go Bargain Hunting in China’s Stagnant Property Market

Rick Casey — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 12:21:24 +0000

(Yicai) Dec. 6 — A number of cash-rich Chinese distillers and coal miners have started to buy up land and properties in the country amid a sluggish real estate market.

An affiliate of liquor maker Jingpai paid CNY3.5 billion (USD490 million) for a sought-after land plot in Suzhou, eastern Jiangsu province, in October at a premium rate of 15 percent. The company has bought up a lot of property in Nanjing and Suzhou this year and is cooperating with real estate developers to let it operate them.

And coal miner Inner Mongolia Manshi Coal Group splashed out CNY4.1 billion (USD575.8 million) on three luxury apartment buildings in Shanghai. Two other coal producers, Erdos Group and Huineng Group, also recently spent CNY2.6 billion and CNY6.2 billion, respectively, on property in Shanghai.

Now is the time to pick up bargains as the real estate market is still stagnant and there are stimulus policies that should soon take effect, Zhang Hongwei, founder of Jingjian Consulting, told Yicai. Companies with deep pockets can buy up properties with a long-term view. They should look for prime properties in good locations that have a low price, he added.

Whether it is time to bargain hunt or not depends on the situation and it is still necessary to pay attention to market and policy risks when getting involved in real estate because of the volatile nature of the market, said Bai Wenxi, chief economist of IPG China.

Real estate is a capital-intensive industry with a lack of liquidity so investors need to carefully weigh up the pros and cons before they make a decision, he said.

Source : YiCaiGlobal

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China’s Unfinished Property Projects Are 20 Times the Size of Country Garden

Rick Casey — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 03:35:09 +0000

BEIJING — The size of unfinished, pre-sold homes in China is about 20 times the size of property developer Country Garden as of the end of 2022, according to a Nomura report on Wednesday.

Country Garden has been the largest non-state-owned developer in China by sales. It ran into financing troubles this year, and defaulted on a U.S. dollar bond last month, according to Bloomberg News.

“We estimate that there are around 20 million units of unconstructed and delayed pre-sold homes,” said Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu and a team.

About 3.2 trillion yuan ($440 billion) is needed to complete those remaining units, according to the analysts’ estimates.

Apartments in China are typically sold ahead of completion. Ensuring construction of the homes has been a government priority since delays make people less willing to buy new apartments.

At some point next year, the issue of home delivery could turn into a social issue and endanger social stability, and Beijing may eventually need to significantly ramp up policy support.

Nomura

“In our view, amid the collapsing property sector and widespread credit fallout among property developers, home buyers might get increasingly impatient while waiting for the delivery of their purchased new homes,” the Nomura report said.

“At some point next year, the issue of home delivery could turn into a social issue and endanger social stability, and Beijing may eventually need to significantly ramp up policy support,” the analysts said. “We see this as the key to truly restoring the confidence in the property sector and economy.”

Last year, many homebuyers in China decided not to pay their mortgages on property purchases due to long delays in construction. Developers have faced a financing crunch since Beijing’s crackdown in 2020 on their high reliance on debt. Covid-19 restrictions last year also made construction difficult.

“Assuming 20% volume growth in new home completions for the current year, developers will only manage to deliver 48% of the homes pre-sold between 2015 and 2020, leaving 52% still subject to delays,” the Nomura analysts said.

Source : CNBC

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China Pushes State Banks to Accelerate Funding for Private Property Developers

Billy Day — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 01:20:07 +0000

Chinese authorities are putting pressure on state banks to accelerate lending to private property developers, as they strengthen efforts to revive the country’s debt-stricken real estate market by supporting some of its biggest and most precarious companies.

Chinese regulators have instructed state banks to ensure the amount of loans to private property developers at least match the sector-wide average, according to two people who attended a gathering in Beijing on Friday of senior government and banking officials.

Shares of private developers jumped on Tuesday. The companies, which lack the support of their state-backed rivals, have been at the heart of a crisis in China’s property sector, which previously accounted for more than a quarter of economic activity in the country.

A barrage of defaults at private developers, led by Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property company, in 2021, has shaken confidence in China’s economy, leaving creditors to chase unpaid debts and real estate projects to sit unfinished across the country.

The unfolding funding crisis has pushed Country Garden, once China’s biggest private developer by sales and long thought of as more financially stable than its peers, into bond default this year.

“These new measures reflect concerns of policymakers on the credit risk of private developers,” said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie. “It would boost the short-term market sentiment for sure,” he added, while cautioning that “what commercial banks can do is limited”, pointing to the lack of success of previous support packages.

At the meeting on Friday, regulators also told state lenders to issue mortgages to home buyers purchasing property from private developers at least at the same pace as they issue mortgages to buyers from all developers.

The latest moves, conveyed to banks in person by representatives from the People’s Bank of China, the Central Financial Commission, the National Administration of Financial Regulation and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, illustrated authorities’ urgent concern about arresting the downward spiral in the property sector.

Regulators also pledged on Friday to consider unwinding some restrictions, such as caps on bank loans for mergers of developers.

Previous piecemeal support measures have failed to reverse the slowdown. A flagship $27bn PBoC bailout scheme has disbursed only about 3 per cent of its funds after state lenders could not find creditworthy developers.

At the Friday gathering, China’s biggest banks, brokerages and distressed asset managers were directed to meet property developers’ funding needs to a “reasonable” degree, according to an official readout.

The People’s Bank of China, NAFR and CSRC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shares in Chinese property developers gained on Tuesday, with the Hang Seng Mainland Properties index, which tracks Hong Kong-listed Chinese developers, rising 2.9 per cent, well ahead of a 0.6 per cent increase for the broader Hang Seng benchmark.

Shares in developer Sunac China leapt 19 per cent after disclosing on Tuesday that it had begun implementing a $10bn debt restructuring. Country Garden climbed 7.8 per cent and Longfor Group rose 5.8 per cent, while China Vanke and China Overseas Land added 5 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

“A key thing to watch is whether and when policymakers will take bolder action, such as creating a lender or buyer of last resort for property developers,” Hu said. “If it happens, this will be the turning point for the property market.”

Source : FinancialTimes

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