Although real estate companies have adopted various methods to promote sales, the performance of the top 100 real estate companies in "Golden September" is still inadequate.

According to the statistics of the China Index Institute, in September, the sales of the top 100 real estate companies decreased by 38.81% year-on-year, and decreased by 2.2% month-on-month.

Looking at the cumulative data, in the first three quarters of this year, the performance scale of the top 100 real estate companies has remained at a historical low. Data from the China Index Institute shows that from January to September 2024, the total sales of the top 100 real estate companies amounted to 2969.94 billion yuan, a decrease of 38.8% year-on-year.

"September is a traditional peak season for marketing. Although real estate companies have increased their discount efforts, the transaction performance still appears slightly sluggish. Predicting October, based on expectations of favorable policies, overall transactions may stabilize or stop falling, while first-tier cities, as direct beneficiaries of the new policies, still have room for increased sales of new homes," said analysts from Ke Ruirui.

Specifically, in the first 9 months, there were 6 real estate companies with total sales exceeding 100 billion, 8 fewer than the same period last year; 65 real estate companies with total sales exceeding 10 billion, 31 fewer than the same period last year.

Among them, Poly Developments and Holdings Group ranked first in the industry with sales of 242.1 billion yuan in the first 9 months of this year, followed closely by China Overseas Property with 198.8 billion yuan, Evergrande Group ranked third with 187.19 billion yuan, Vanke ranked fourth with 180.49 billion yuan, and China Resources Land ranked fifth with sales of 172.3 billion yuan.

The sixth to tenth places in the industry are taken by China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings, Jianfa Property, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group, Yuexiu Property, and Longfor Group, with sales of 145.1 billion yuan, 85.26 billion yuan, 80.1 billion yuan, 78.3 billion yuan, and 73.16 billion yuan, respectively.

It is worth noting that, entering the traditional sales peak season of 'Golden September and Silver October', real estate companies are launching innovative marketing strategies with the help of loose policies, attracting traffic from various aspects to boost consumer confidence and sales performance.

Among them, Poly Developments has introduced innovative marketing strategies, launching the 'Golden September and Silver October' price protection activities at multiple project companies, making the first move in this year's 'price protection'. In early September, Poly announced the 'Poly Price Protection, Buy at a higher price is our guarantee' 'Golden September and Silver October Reassured Purchase Plan' to mainly cover aspects such as price protection, special offers, and guaranteed occupancy. 'Price protection' is one aspect of it.

"Price protection is a marketing tool aimed at promoting the turnover of commercial housing. With the obvious decline in house prices in many cities currently, when prices fall back, buyers are reluctant to make a move. Committing to price protection can, to a certain extent, dispel buyers' concerns about price declines, reduce their wait-and-see attitude, help with project marketing turnover. In addition, real estate companies' price protection helps stabilize buyers' price expectations and convey confidence in industry development." Analysts at China Real Estate Research Institute pointed out.

At the same time, real estate companies are increasing online and offline welfare efforts to promote sales through multiple measures. For example, China Overseas Land & Investment is launching online and offline linkage, offering discounts of 2% for a limited time, a 200,000 talent subsidy, a 10,000 yuan travel fund, and other 7 combinations of welfare benefits to boost consumers' buying emotions, converting online activities into sales force, and increasing sales performance.

On the other hand, multiple real estate companies are enhancing multi-city collaboration and launching a series of themed activities. For example, Longfor Group has launched a five-city collaborative activity, offering fixed prices for quality hot properties, combined with various housing subsidy benefits, holiday travel rewards, property fee gifts, renovation subsidies, gold gifts, 2% discounts, and more, driving consumers' buying emotions.

In addition, many real estate companies are exploring new models for real estate development. Among them, China Green Development is orderly carrying out urban renewal and affordable housing construction, exploring new models of real estate development, piloting industry demonstrative products in Shanghai, Xiongan, and other places, closely following the new demand for retirement, exploring new elderly care service models, and launching the China Green Mei Di Jinan Hua Mei Yi Yang Center product.

It is worth noting that to boost the real estate market, there have been frequent positive news from the central to local levels at the end of September. On September 24, regulatory authorities introduced a series of heavyweight policies, including reserve requirement ratio cuts, policy rate cuts, interest rate reductions on existing house loans, reduction of down payment ratio for second homes, increased central fund support ratio for re-loans, extension of the '16 financial measures', etc.; the Political Bureau meeting also set the tone to promote the stabilization of the real estate market, and later Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen followed up with policy implementation, continuously optimizing and adjusting the 'four restrictions' policy.

Among them, Guangzhou has completely lifted purchase restrictions; Beijing has significantly optimized the purchase restriction policy, reducing the social security year limit for non-Beijing residents to 3 years within the Fifth Ring, and to 2 years outside the Fifth Ring, and for high-level talents to 1 year; Shenzhen's core area has implemented '3 changes for 1 social security', while non-core areas no longer require social security, Shenzhen has also lowered the down payment ratio, and the appreciation tax period has been reduced from 5 years to 2 years; Shanghai has modified the purchase restrictions for outer ring areas, implemented '3 changes for 1 social security', adjusted the appreciation tax from '5 changes to 2 changes', and cancelled the restrictions on non-residential properties.

"The policies in first-tier cities are being implemented intensively, which will help to maximize the effect of policy overlay, and overall will play a more positive role in stabilizing market expectations and boosting market confidence. Recently, multiple policies have been implemented more quickly, and the prices of properties in core cities may stabilize. The activity in the real estate market in the fourth quarter is expected to increase, and the core city market is expected to stabilize more quickly, which will drive the national real estate market to stabilize more quickly." Chen Wenjing, director of policy research at Zhongzhi Research Institute, believes.

Furthermore, with various policies being strengthened and implemented quickly, it is expected that the market will accelerate its recovery. Sales improvement in core cities can be expected in October, which will then drive marginal improvement in the market in the fourth quarter; however, considering the time needed for the transformation of long-term factors such as residents' income and employment, the market is expected to continue the bottoming out trend in the short term.

Editor/ping