BEIJING – China’s home prices fell at a faster pace in April, signalling the property market slump remains a headache for policymakers as they fend off a tariff war with the US.
New-home prices in 70 cities, excluding state-subsidised housing, dropped 0.12 per cent from March, when they declined 0.08 per cent, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed on May 19. Values of used homes slid 0.41 per cent, compared with a 0.23 per cent drop a month earlier.
The trade war risks worsening the housing slump that has dragged on economic growth and has only recently been showing signs of abating. While the US and China made a truce on tariffs last week, trade ructions may add to woes for workers in the export-driven economy, curtailing housing demand.
“The elephant in the room is China’s property market,” ANZ Group Holdings economists wrote in a recent note. “The tariff shock is caused by the unpredictability rather than the tariff itself.”
The situation appears to be different in Hong Kong though.
Hong Kong’s biggest property developer Sun Hung Kai Properties sold another 376 flats on May 18 after receiving more than 34,000 bids, becoming one of the most sought after projects in months thanks to low interest rates.
The new round of sales at Sun Hung Kai’s Sierra Sea in the Ma On Shan area comes days after a quick sellout of its first batch earlier last week. The flats sold at about HK$9,645 (S$1,600) to HK$13,500 per square metre.
A drop in interest rates is helping the city’s residential market. The one-month Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor), which often serves as a reference rate for mortgages, dipped below 1.3 per cent, the lowest since August 2022.
“The one-month Hibor’s plunge could push mortgage rates further below residential rental yields and reignite investment interest in Hong Kong’s housing market,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Patrick Wong and John Wong wrote in a note on May 16.
They also expect monthly new-home sales in the Asia financial hub to jump by 36 per cent from 1,100 units in April.
The company sold all 160 units in the 1B phase of the same residential development within hours last week.
Home value for secondary transactions slightly edged up as borrowing costs lowered. Centaline Property Centa-City Leading Index, a gauge for second-hand home prices, climbed by about 0.26 per cent in the week through May 11.
Lower interest rates are helping to increase the chances of Hong Kong’s residential property market bottoming out, according to Jefferies Financial Group.
Mr Justin Chiu, executive director of CK Asset Holdings, said Hong Kong’s property market is at a “turning point”, and he expects property prices in the city to rise, according to an interview with local media on May 19.
The city’s home prices are 29 per cent below their peak in 2021, data from the government show. The number of households with negative equity – when the value of a property is less than the outstanding mortgage loan – rose to the highest since 2003 as of the end of March. BLOOMBERG
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