Two of China’s private data agencies, China Real Estate Information Corp and China Index Academy, have been told to withhold monthly home sales figures of the country’s 100 largest developers, according to people familiar with the matter. With property values already a cause for concern, this further reduction in transparency may add to already existing angst.
This data set is an important gauge of the new-home market, and is usually released two to three weeks before official government figures. This, alongside Vanke’s decision to postpone repayment on a local bond for the first time, will likely exacerbate the current sense of pessimism in China’s property sector.
Transparency, or lack of it, is a continuing problem here, and when figures are not released, most people will suspect the worst. The real estate sector is at the heart of the domestic economy, and while there are new areas of growth, they are not yet large enough to replace property. All of this points to a basic conclusion—the gradual downward slide of China’s property market is not stopping yet.