For the real estate industry, this golden autumn that should have been harvested has turned into early winter.
According to statistics, from February to August this year, the national real estate market turnover decreased by 3.6%, 0.3%, 4.0%, 6.5%, 6.9%, 10.8% and 14.9% respectively. The volume of commercial housing in Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, Tianjin, Jiangsu and other economically developed provinces and cities fell by more than 20%. Entering the traditional sales season of "Golden September and Silver 10", developers rack their brains, discount, special price, send decoration, send cars, and even "buy a house for free" and directly reduce prices ... but buyers don't seem to buy it. From September 1 to1October 19, there were 1732 1 set of online auction houses in Beijing, with an average of 353 sets per day, a year-on-year decrease of 28.8%. Judging from the public transaction data of other cities, the transaction volume dropped significantly compared with the same period of last year, and the quality of "Golden September and Silver 10" was insufficient.
The survey of urban depositors in the third quarter recently released by the central bank shows that the proportion of residents who intend to buy a house in the next three months is 13.3%, which is the lowest level since the survey was carried out in 1999. Among the seven cities surveyed, the proportion of people who plan to buy houses in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the next three months is less than 10%, even lower than the national average. Since the fourth quarter of last year, the widespread wait-and-see mood has become more and more serious.
The continuous downturn in transaction volume has caused house prices in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places to fall, and cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have also become obviously loose. According to the data released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the price increase of 70 large and medium-sized cities fluctuated downward in the first nine months, and the downward trend of house prices gradually became obvious in August. The mentality of "buying up and not buying down" has made buyers wait and see further, which has aggravated the deterioration of transaction volume.
"Market adjustment will continue, depending on how long it lasts and to what extent." In the past year, the fierce debate between academia and industry on market trends has also tended to be consistent.
Although local governments in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi, Nanjing, Fuzhou and other cities have recently introduced some subsidy measures to encourage buyers to buy houses. The central bank cut interest rates and deposit reserve ratio twice in a month. Last week, the Ministry of Finance introduced measures such as reducing taxes and fees on housing transactions and expanding the interest rate reduction of commercial individual housing loans to improve the policy environment for housing consumption. However, if buyers do not change the expectation of further decline in house prices, there are still many uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment, and this winter may not end soon.
Price reduction, financing, scale reduction, cost saving-
Get the winter quilt ready
Winter is doomed to be difficult. In the past few years, most real estate enterprises have avoided market risks to some extent by relying on the mode of rapid land acquisition, rapid development and rapid sales. In the case of low turnover and slow sales, various pressures such as financial pressure of projects under construction, rising cost and financial pressure of land reserve are gathering. In addition, bank credit is still tight for the real estate industry, and the performance of the capital market is weak, which makes the enterprise feel chilly.
It's winter. Where is the quilt?
"In February 65438 and March next year, we will repay the bank loan twice. If the market still does not improve after that, we intend to sacrifice two or three projects and promote at a loss to withdraw funds. " The sales manager of a real estate company in Jiangsu told the reporter, "A few years ago, I was too optimistic about the industry judgment, and the stall was too big. Now it is the first to survive. "
"Price reduction, only price reduction." Yin Zhongli, a researcher at the Institute of Finance of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the main contradiction in the real estate market at present is the contradiction between excessive housing prices and the purchasing power of ordinary residents. Although there are various discounts and promotions in the market, they are still secretive, and there are fewer public price reductions. Only when enterprises clearly cut prices on a large scale and house prices are close to buyers' expectations can the wait-and-see mood be alleviated and the transaction volume will pick up. "The real estate industry has returned to the era of' cash is king' in the past two years. Whoever can withdraw funds quickly will survive. " Yin Zhongli said.
Some large housing enterprises took the lead in reducing prices in the industry, which really accelerated the return of funds in a short time and seized valuable cash flow. At the end of August, Vanke blew up the wind of property price reduction from the Pearl River Delta to the Yangtze River Delta, with a minimum price reduction of 70% to 30%. Shanghai Mid-Autumn Festival promotion lasted only two days, and the sales amount reached 268 million yuan. Throughout September, Vanke achieved a sales area of 532,000 square meters and a sales amount of 4.3 billion yuan, up by 12.2% and 5.7% respectively compared with August. The effect of preemptive price reduction is obvious. Similarly, Evergrande Real Estate and Poly Real Estate, which were sold at reduced prices during the Golden Week, also achieved good results. However, for most unresponsive housing enterprises, the price reduction following the footsteps of big housing enterprises has not achieved obvious results at present.
Short-term sales return is not enough to spend the long winter, while the bank's credit to the real estate industry is still tight, and the downturn in the capital market has also slowed down the financing pace of many enterprises. According to statistics, in 2007, when the stock market soared, the cash flow generated by corporate financing activities reached 654.38+0064 billion yuan, while the cash flow generated by financing activities in the first quarter of this year was 34.946 billion yuan, and only 9.466 billion yuan in the second quarter. In this situation, the issuance of corporate bonds and private high-interest loans and other financing methods have become the choice for many housing enterprises to alleviate the hunger for funds.
According to statistics, since March this year, several housing enterprises such as Jindi, Poly Real Estate, Xinhubao, Vanke, Beichen Industry and COFCO Real Estate have issued corporate bonds totaling 654.38+05.7 billion yuan. Financial Street and Oceanwide Construction are also actively preparing to issue corporate bonds. Real estate has become the most frequent industry to issue corporate bonds this year.
At the same time, real estate enterprises are more and more courageous to borrow high-interest loans. According to the person in charge of a real estate enterprise in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, in order to tide over the difficulties, local real estate enterprises dare to borrow "a monthly profit of ten cents (10%)". He said, "This kind of loan is a short-term loan for two or three months, which is very risky. If it doesn't get up by then, the developer can only escape. "
On the one hand, it is to find money, on the other hand, it is to save money. In order to better use the only funds in the "cutting edge", some real estate enterprises began to reduce the construction area and reduce the investment scale.
Recently, Capital Land has publicly stated that the construction area of the company will be reduced from the original 6,543.8+0.5 million square meters to 600,000 square meters, a reduction of 60%. The completed area in 2009 will also be greatly reduced from 2 million square meters to 880,000 square meters. According to statistics, in the first quarter of 2008, the newly started area, completed area and construction area of the real estate industry increased by 25.9%, 26.9% and 27.5% year-on-year. Compared with the same period last year, the growth rate has increased significantly. By the second quarter, the year-on-year growth rates of newly started, completed and constructed areas were 14. 1%, 4.4% and 15.0%, respectively, and the growth rate dropped significantly.
"Not only should we be alert to the sharp drop in housing prices now, but we should also worry about the skyrocketing housing prices in two or three years." Zhao, deputy director of the residential research center of China Urban Planning and Design Institute, believes that the trend of slowing down investment growth in the real estate industry has emerged. In addition, this year's land market transactions are sluggish. It is expected that the new construction and construction area of real estate will continue to decline in the future, followed by a significant decline in market supply after two or three years. He is worried that if this situation continues and the market stock is digested to a certain extent, the market will be in short supply again, which may trigger another round of skyrocketing housing prices.
In addition, in the past, real estate enterprises with deep pockets also started from the inside to reduce expenses and costs. Since the second half of this year, housing enterprises in some places have begun to lay off employees, and the "slimming" activities have gradually spread to Beijing, Guangzhou and other places, and some small enterprises have even laid off more than 50% of their employees.
Fang, chairman of Xiangjiang Ye Wei, said that for the real estate industry, the proportion of labor costs and management costs is quite small, and layoffs are only the "best policy". Not only that, if the market turnover does not rebound obviously in the future, enterprises will "die" on the price, and any other method can only survive temporarily, and can only "die" in the long run.
Performance differentiation, accelerated pace of mergers and acquisitions, and different current strategies-
Moderate integration is conducive to healthy development
People in the industry generally believe that this round of market adjustment will inevitably bring about "decent integration" of the real estate industry, which is a great opportunity for enterprises to merge and reorganize. Weaker developers will be hit hard, while powerful developers may free up their hands to buy small and medium-sized developers and unfinished projects through rapid sales and withdrawal of funds.
In August, when Vanke blew the price reduction wind to the Yangtze River Delta, the insiders once judged that Vanke's move was to win the future. According to the company's announcement, as of the end of September, Vanke has acquired 28 projects, including 25 through mergers and acquisitions, accounting for 84% of the project area.
The market responded positively to mergers and acquisitions. According to the analysis report of Beijing Equity Exchange, the industry that attracted the most attention from investors in September was the real estate industry. Among them, Beijing Oriental Times Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. transferred 1 1. 13% equity and became the project with the largest number of bidders. Foshan Golden Sunshine Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. transferred 100% equity, which became the most concerned project for investors. "In the past, some projects that could not negotiate the price were much more difficult to talk about now. Especially some small and medium-sized companies. " A developer told reporters.
The stronger the better. From June 5438 to August 2008, the sales of Poly Real Estate increased by 25.26%, Vanke increased by 5%, and Gemdale increased by 2.7%, which was better than the overall sales decline of the industry 12.7%.
It can be seen from the performance of listed companies in the real estate industry that differentiation has begun to appear. Tianxiang Investment's analysis of the 2008 interim report of the real estate industry shows that Vanke A achieved a net profit of 206 1 100 million yuan, and the net profit of only one company accounted for 16.24% of the total net profit of real estate listed companies. Five leading companies, including Vanke A, Poly Real Estate, China Merchants Property, Jindi and OCT A, achieved a net profit of 55180,000 yuan, accounting for 43.97% of the net profit of all listed real estate enterprises. Judging from the third quarter performance forecast, the performance differentiation is more obvious. Among the 24 companies that announced the announcement, * * had 16 pre-increase, 7 pre-decrease and 3 losses. In the pre-increase, 12 companies expect the growth rate to exceed 50%. At the same time, the financial pressure of listed companies and the situation of accounts received in advance have also differentiated to some extent. As the market adjustment continues, the industry reshuffle will be further intensified.
"When the market is good, any house can be sold, and developers will not even look at the drawings carefully." Yan Kai, deputy director of the Habitat Committee of China Real Estate and Housing Research Association, believes that a few years ago, the real estate market had a low entry threshold and the market was mixed. Various enterprises take the opportunity to enter the real estate industry, develop one or two properties, and then leave after profiteering, which seriously disrupts the market order and affects the healthy development of the industry. "Now, some enterprises have begun to pay more attention to housing quality. In the long run, through integration, the real estate industry will also move from extensive to intensive, which is conducive to the healthy development of the industry. "
Under the background of market adjustment and industry integration, enterprises' understanding of risks and market cycles is constantly improving, and their later strategies are also different. Shen Yongmin, chairman of Zhejiang Jindu Group, told the reporter that Jindu Group's current projects under construction, projects under sale and pre-operation each accounted for 1/3, effectively alleviating the financial pressure. "Thanks to the calm in previous years, we are better off now." Shen Yongmin said that in the future, Jindu will maintain its current proportion and strictly control the pace of national layout, mainly in cities that have already entered.
On the other hand, some companies with less financial pressure have quietly started to carry out "winter storage". The reporter learned from a state-owned real estate company in Beijing that the company recently held a meeting above the middle level, clearly stating that the main task in the near future is to reserve a large amount of land in the case of a deserted land market and wait for the market to pick up. An insider of the company said: "When the market was hot a few years ago, many enterprises blindly pursued high prices and hoarded land at high prices, resulting in most of the funds being deposited in the land reserve. Now they can only complain bitterly. With the deepening of market adjustment, enterprises have a deeper understanding of the market cycle and their behavior has become more rational and mature. "