Increasing housing turnover could lift Chinese economy

With rising turnover, the housing sector will expedite China’s economy recovery as the COVID-19 epidemic has obviously eased, industry experts and insiders told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Citing data from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the China Securities Journal (CSJ) reported that 11,973 apartments were sold in the city last month, compared with 8,554 in January.

In the first three days of the May Day holidays, 1,131 apartments in Beijing were sold through Lianjia – a leading housing agency – up 231.7 percent year-on-year, and the number of customers visiting the agency’s outlets exceeded one-quarter of the total in April, the CSJ reported.

Xia Xi, a housing agent at Lianjia, told the Global Times that he definitely saw an increase in the number of customers. Within 10 days, he had signed two contracts, which usually took nearly one month.“Based on the number of visiting customers, who are potential buyers, I believe that housing turnover will continue to grow in the coming months,” Xia said.

Increasing turnover is also good for other industries such as the renovation sector. A manager surnamed Hu at ikongjian, an online renovation company, told the Global Times that orders have increased more than 100 percent compared with two months ago.

“As more people are buying houses, demand for renovation has also been driven up,” Hu said.

Even though it is hard to say China’s housing sector has entered a boom time, increasing turnover indicates that China’s economy is being revived. As the real estate industry has deep links with other sectors such as steel and renovation, more industries will recover at the same time, according to Zhang Dawei, chief analyst with Centaline Property.