Home Buyers Must Now Wait 3 Years to Sell in Shenzhen

By Adam Robbins, August 2, 2018

Hoping to get rich flipping Shenzhen real estate? Not so fast.

Yes, Shenzhen’s property market is still on fire, Caixin reports, with new home sales jumping 21.9 percent in the first half of 2018. Reporting by Bloomberg shows those homes sold in June an average of 5.6 percent higher than a year earlier.

This average price of RMB54,200 per square meter boosts Shenzhen to rank of third-most expensive city in China to purchase a home. This could be due to Shenzhen’s distinction as “most livable”... but is probably more tied to the Greater Bay Area plan and the promise of investments linking Shenzhen to Guangzhou, Macau, Hong Kong and other cities in the Pearl River Delta.

In an attempt to halt real estate speculation and cool the market, Shenzhen’s city government announced new restrictions on August 31:

Corporations and organizations are banned from purchasing residential property
Individuals must wait three years after obtaining a deed before they can sell a home
The wait period is extended to five years for serviced apartments
Newly-built serviced apartments cannot be sold; they can only be leased

This announcement comes the same day as a statement from the Politburo, committing to “clamp down on home-price gains,” according to the Bloomberg report. In the wake of the news, Chinese real estate developers trading in Hong Kong saw their stock prices fall.

Shenzhen now joins more than 50 Chinese cities in imposing wait periods and other restrictions. In Beijing and Shanghai, China’s most expensive cities, existing limits helped housing prices fall in the year since June 2017.

[Cover image via Maxpixel.net]