The in-depth adjustment of the real estate industry is still ongoing.
In March, subject to the epidemic situation, economy and other factors, the traditional “little sunny spring” in the real estate market did not appear, but the downward trend of the market became more and more obvious. Data show that the transaction area of commercial housing in 30 large and medium-sized cities in China decreased by 49% year-on-year, and the decline in the sales performance of mainstream real estate enterprises is still expanding.
On April 8, Poly Developments And Holdings Group Co.Ltd(600048) holdings released poly’s 20212022 white paper on the real estate industry (hereinafter referred to as “white paper”), which concluded that, unlike in the past, this round of market downturn was the result of the superposition of short-term, medium and long-term factors and comprehensive fermentation. The sharp tightening of credit in the third quarter of 2021 directly led to the contraction of buyer demand, frustration of confidence and change of expectation, and the overall price limit in the primary and secondary housing market, It has closed the space for the rise of house prices, frozen the second-hand housing market and cut off the chain of house exchange.
At present, measures such as credit correction, local stabilizing the market and supporting reasonable demand have not been able to reverse the downward trend of the property market, but the fundamentals of the real estate industry have not changed. It is generally expected that multi-dimensional easing policies will be introduced in the future to promote the healthy development and virtuous circle of the real estate industry.
However, the peak growth of the real estate industry is a foreseeable future, and the white paper believes that the industry will enter an era of “reduced development”. In this process, exploring a new development model to adapt to the development of the times will become a key factor for real estate enterprises to stand at the forefront of the industry.
industry scale peaked
The first quarter of 2022 has passed, and the situation facing the real estate industry is still not optimistic Boc International (China) Co.Ltd(601696) data show that in March, the transaction area of new houses in 46 cities tracked by it rebounded month on month, with a year-on-year decrease of 49.1%, an increase of 18.2 percentage points over February; The transaction area of second-hand houses in 16 cities decreased by 42% year-on-year, an increase of 1.4 percentage points over the previous month.
“It is expected that the sales in April will still operate at a low level, and the end of the market may come in the middle and late second quarter. The transaction in May and June is expected to stabilize at the bottom, and the year-on-year decline will also be narrowed.” The above institutions believe that “the first and second tier cities are expected to take the lead in stabilizing, and it will take a long time for the market of the third and fourth tier cities to stabilize.”
The starting point of the current round of industry downturn is 2021. Due to the policy superposition effect and the clearing pressure of the industry, the market fell more than expected in the second half of 2021.
According to the visit data of Poly Real estate, in the first half of 2021, 80-100 groups were visited by the weekly disk, and 50-60 groups were visited by the weekly disk in the second half of 2021, showing a cliff like decline, with a month on month decrease of 38% and a year-on-year decrease of 33%. Market confidence is seriously insufficient.
From the perspective of market performance, from the perspective of national commercial housing sales area, it increased by 27% year-on-year in the first half of 2021, turned negative for the first time year-on-year in a single month in July, and decreased by 15% year-on-year in the second half of the year; At the same time, the average sales price of commercial housing decreased significantly from August of that year. The average sales price of commercial housing in December was 9512 yuan / m2, a decrease of 13.8% compared with the beginning of the year.
Over the same period, the sales of real estate enterprises decreased more significantly. According to Kerui data, in July 2021, the monthly sales performance of the top 100 real estate enterprises changed from positive to negative, with a year-on-year decline of less than 7% in a single month. Since then, the decline has expanded month by month, and the year-on-year decline of full caliber sales in a single month in December reached about 35%. Among them, the sales of top 10 real estate enterprises in the second half of the year decreased by 28% year-on-year.
The downward trend of the land market is also significant. According to the data of the white paper, compared with one batch of land supply, the land transfer fee of three batches in 22 cities in China decreased by 47%, the transfer rate of auction or suspension reached 19%, the average premium rate was only 2.3%, and the land price decreased by 10002000 yuan / m2.
Even so, in 2021, the national commercial housing sales area reached 1.79 billion square meters, and the sales reached 18.2 trillion yuan, which remained at a high level.
The peak of industry growth has also become the consensus of the industry. According to the data of the National Bureau of statistics, the sales area of commercial housing in China reached 1.694 billion square meters in 2017, and this index has been basically stable since then. From 2018 to 2020, it was 1.717 billion square meters, 1.716 billion square meters and 1.761 billion square meters respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 1.3%, – 0.1% and 2.6% respectively.
“In the future, it is generally expected that it is difficult to make a significant breakthrough in the transaction area, so the industry has entered an era of no growth.” Ding Zuyu, CEO of E-House China, previously said. Lin Zhong, chairman of Xuhui’s board of directors, also expects that the capacity of the real estate industry will be maintained at 1 billion + square meters and 15 trillion + transactions in the future.
Poly Developments And Holdings Group Co.Ltd(600048) in the published white paper, it is further believed that considering the change of housing structure and the reduction of demand and new supply, the commercial housing market will enter an era of reduced development.
Among them, the top-level design of the housing security system is clear. During the 14th Five Year Plan period, 40 key cities plan to add 6.5 million affordable rental housing, and the proportion of new affordable rental housing in the total supply of new housing will strive to reach more than 30%.
The “14th five year plan” is basically the same as the “13th five year plan” of Zhejiang Province. “The proportion of affordable rental housing has increased, the proportion of commercial housing has decreased, and the scale of commercial housing has entered an era of reduction.” The white paper said.
urbanization will continue at a high speed
There are many difficulties at present, but it does not mean that the industry has lost its future. In fact, the essence of the real estate industry as a pillar industry of China’s economy has not changed, and it is still a key force for steady growth and expanding domestic demand.
Zhang Huadong, chief researcher of the billion Han think tank, told the first finance and economics that the relationship between real estate and social consumption is a promotion relationship, because the post market of real estate is very long, and it has a very obvious pull effect on C-end consumption, especially in the construction building materials, home decoration, home appliances, etc., including automobile and other industries.
According to the data of the white paper, in 2021, the total sales of first-hand and second-hand housing in China exceeded 23 trillion yuan. At the same time, in a series of related consumption driven by housing consumption, the scale of furniture industry exceeded 800 billion yuan and that of home appliance industry exceeded 1.7 trillion yuan.
In terms of contribution to the economy, the added value of the real estate industry in 2021 will be 7.76 trillion, with a contribution rate of 6.8% to GDP. If the added value of more than 50 industries involved in the upstream and downstream of real estate is taken together, the contribution rate to GDP growth will be close to 20%.
From this point of view, by fully releasing residents’ housing consumption, the real estate industry can form a huge domestic demand market and provide important support for building a “new pattern of internal circulation and double circulation”.
From the perspective of the real estate industry itself, its fundamentals have not changed. The industry believes that reasonable housing demand still has sufficient support for the industry.
On the whole, the urbanization rate of China’s permanent population in 2021 was 64.72%. According to the prediction of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the urbanization process will continue to advance at a high speed during the 14th Five Year Plan period and enter a stable development stage in three to five years. The peak rate of urbanization rate is probably between 75% and 80%.
Among them, large and medium-sized cities with good fundamentals, population and industry agglomeration, urban life cycle is upward, the real estate market is still in the growth period, and the demand is still expanding.
The white paper points out that the expansion of demand also brings strong demand for urban construction: internally, the public facilities in the urban center continue to improve, and the urban renewal still has great vitality; Externally, to build a high-speed rail node city and comprehensive transportation hub, we still need to fully mobilize resources and do a good job in infrastructure construction.
At the demand level, the cities with population inflow have strong demand. In 2020, China’s floating population reached 376 million, an increase of 70% over 2010. The floating population in Shanghai and Shenzhen exceeded 10 million, and that in Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu exceeded 8 million. The intertwined flow of population will produce continuous and large demand for rigid housing.
At the same time, there is room for continuous release of the replacement demand generated by residents of public housing, affordable housing and self built housing, the improvement demand brought by nearly 10 billion square meters of old housing built before the end of 2000, as well as the demand for family miniaturization and aging.
new citizens generate new demand
Opportunities still exist. As the main body, real estate enterprises bid farewell to the extensive “three high” model in the past. What are the ways out for high-quality development?
In terms of traditional residential property, the white paper proposes to focus on high-energy cities with high population growth. The transaction toughness of commercial housing in these markets is strong and the fluctuation is small; At the same time, we should focus on the effective market in the region. At the same time, carefully study and judge the differences in housing consumption in the region, focusing on the matching between demand and customer demand.
For operational properties, the white paper believes that the logic of residential back feeding business and sales feedback management in the past is no longer appropriate. It is the key to explore a mature profit model and get rid of “real estate thinking”.
In fact, many developers have made good achievements in operating properties. Longhu, which has 61 shopping malls in operation, received a 40% year-on-year increase in rental income in 2021, reaching 8.15 billion yuan, and the rental rate remained at a high level of 97%; Shanghai Henglong Plaza under Henglong real estate focused on the heavy luxury route and achieved a high-level annual rent increase of more than 15% during the epidemic period from 2020 to 2021.
In addition, although indemnificatory rental housing will occupy the supply of commercial housing to a certain extent, with the rapid development of Shenzhen New Industries Biomedical Engineering Co.Ltd(300832) , new business forms and new models, more and more people with flexible employment have actually brought sufficient demand to the rental market.
According to the data of the Bureau of statistics, in 2021, the number of flexible employees in China reached 200 million, including IT technology, online celebrities, anchor, takeout riders, etc. For these mobile and young groups, renting a house has become a more common choice.
According to the data of the white paper, the current resident population of Beijing and Shanghai is about 21.89 million and 24.87 million respectively, but the actual management population has exceeded 30 million. The actual management population of Guangzhou and Shenzhen exceeds 22 million, exceeding the permanent population of 3 million and 4 million.
Solving the housing problems of new citizens, young people and other groups with housing difficulties and developing affordable rental housing has also become an important task during the 14th Five Year Plan period.
In March 2022, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, pointed out that new citizens have lived in cities and towns, but do not have a registered permanent residence, or have just obtained a registered permanent residence for less than two or three years. “This population is about 300 million, and they are facing the actual needs of living and working in peace and contentment, starting a business, renting and buying a house, children going to school, elderly care and so on”.
Such a huge demand for new citizens’ housing has prompted the development of rental housing to become a new model worthy of exploration by real estate enterprises.
The white paper points out that the promotion of policy rental housing is fast, and the path and business model are basically clear. The policy transfers the land price at the front end, revitalizes the stock, provides subsidies in the construction and operation links, improves the overall EBITDA, and brings the back end into the public offering REITs to realize the exit, forming a closed-loop policy of investment, finance, construction, management and return.
“According to the data released by the Ministry of housing and urban rural development, 2.4 million new affordable rental housing units will be raised in 2022, which is a great test of the financial strength of local governments and the professional ability and talent reserve of local state-owned enterprises. It can speed up the introduction of Central real estate enterprises with a high degree of marketization.” The report said.
Private real estate enterprises have taken action in this regard. “Through our brand advantages and management advantages so far, we carry out escrow and construction,” the management of country garden said. “At the same time, we want to go deep into the construction of indemnificatory housing through scientific and technological wisdom construction, through escrow and construction, through EPC mode, through the competitiveness of scientific and technological wisdom construction, and cooperate with state-owned enterprises, local governments and even central enterprises in the construction of indemnificatory housing.”
