Hopes for housing turnaround in the air

Nevertheless, the national housing market remains stable, in line with the two principles of "houses are for living in, not for speculation" and "stability of the housing market should be maintained", Brodie said.

"The property sector was further returning to its initial characteristics of people's livelihood in 2021, thanks to consistent efforts to reduce home speculation and pay equal attention to home-buying and leasing," said Xie Chen, head of research at CBRE China.

Owing to effective financial measures, listed property developers saw their net debt ratio decline 4 percentage points year-on-year in the first half of 2021, Xie said.

In November, the majority of 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities saw meager growth in their new and existing home prices compared with the prices a year ago, and their month-on-month growth rate fell too, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Property investment stood at around 13.73 trillion yuan ($2.16 trillion) in the first 11 months of last year. Compared with the same period of 2019, property investment climbed 13.2 percent, putting the two-year average at 6.4 percent, the NBS said.

Analysis of past few years' NBS data found that although many Chinese cities experienced month-on-month home price dips, 13 cities still reported an increase in new home prices and four cities saw a rise in pre-owned home prices, said Ding with E-House (China).

These cities include hot spot first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and Xiamen, Fujian province, as well as a few lower-tier cities such as Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Pingdingshan, Henan province, and Sanya, Hainan province, Ding said.

Industry experts said the changes took place in 2021, which may better ensure market stability and sustainability in the coming years. Considering the stance of the central government to promote healthy development of the property market, both challenges and opportunities will mark this year. And housing market expectations will be further stabilized too.

The annual Central Economic Work Conference held in Beijing from Dec 8 to 10 sent clear signals that a new round of stable growth is well underway, and that the real estate sector is going to achieve a soft landing by meeting rational home living requirements, said a report by Ren Zeping, chief economist at Soochow Securities.

Reaffirming that "houses are for living in, not for speculation", the conference listed ensuring healthy growth of the real estate sector as one of the nation's key tasks for 2022. It stressed that the nation will accelerate the development of the long-term rental housing market, push forward the construction of government-subsidized housing projects, support the real estate market to better meet reasonable demand of homebuyers and effect differentiated policy measures in accordance with each city's specific conditions, so as to promote the property sector's healthy development and form a virtuous cycle.

The property sector is large, has a long supply chain and a wide outreach, and accounts for a high proportion of the economy, fixed asset investment, local governments' income and financial institutions' loans. It has a vital systemic impact on economic and financial stability and risk prevention, said Han Wenxiu, an official with the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, at a conference held in Beijing on Dec 11.

Experts said the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on Dec 6 and the Central Economic Work Conference shed more light on opportunities.

For example, China will support the property market to better cater to reasonable demand of homebuyers and adopt city-specific policies to boost the virtuous cycle and healthy development of the sector.