National Bureau of Statistics： The restrictions on purchases and sales are moderately liberalized in many places, and the downward trend of real estate sales may ease.

On April 18th, the State Council held a press conference on the operation of the national economy in the first quarter of 2022. Fu Linghui, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics and director of the National Economic Statistics Department, said that in the first quarter of this year, the investment in real estate development increased by 0.7% year-on-year, while the sales area of commercial housing decreased by 13.8%, and the sales of commercial housing decreased by 22.7%. In the case of declining sales, real estate investment has maintained a certain growth, mainly due to the following factors:

First, the role of relevant policies such as ensuring delivery. Since the end of last year, all regions have adhered to the principle of "ensuring delivery, people’s livelihood and stability", actively promoted the resumption of real estate projects that were suspended in the previous period and promoted the construction of projects under construction. In the first quarter, the investment growth rate of real estate projects with a construction period of more than one year exceeded 10%. With the promotion of real estate project construction, in the first quarter, the investment in construction and installation projects among real estate development investment increased by 0.9% year-on-year, driving the growth of real estate investment by more than 0.5 percentage points.

The second is the impact of land purchase fees. In the investment of real estate development, the land purchase fee occurred in the early stage is gradually included with the real estate construction, which correspondingly supports the growth of real estate investment. In the first quarter, the land purchase fee increased by 0.6% year-on-year, which boosted the growth of real estate development investment by more than 0.1 percentage points.

It should also be noted that despite the decline in real estate sales, the total amount of real estate sales is still greater than the total amount of real estate investment, and real estate sales can still support investment to a certain extent. At the same time, the growth of real estate investment is also affected by price factors. Since the beginning of this year, the prices of building materials, engineering installation, etc. have increased relatively, which has pushed up the nominal growth rate of real estate investment to a certain extent.

About the trend of real estate in the next stage. Although the current real estate sales are declining, we should also see that with the moderate liberalization of restrictions on purchases and sales, lowering the threshold for the use of provident funds, and speeding up the approval of home purchase loans, the housing demand in some cities has been released, and the decline in sales area has narrowed.

Fu Linghui also said that,In the next stage, all localities will adhere to the principle of "staying in houses without speculation", continue to stabilize land prices, house prices and expectations, improve the long-term mechanism of the real estate market, and actively meet reasonable housing demand, so that the downward trend of commercial housing sales nationwide may be alleviated. With the continuous improvement of the long-term rental market and the acceleration of the construction of affordable housing, the real estate market is expected to gradually stabilize.