In China, the real estate market continues to struggle. In 2024, the annual sales of state-owned enterprise Yuexiu Real Estate in Guangzhou fell by nearly 20%.
On February 6, Yuexiu Real Estate (00123.HK) disclosed its annual sales figures for 2024. For the entire year, Yuexiu Real Estate’s cumulative contracted sales (including joint ventures and affiliated company projects) amounted to approximately 114.54 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 19.4%. The cumulative contracted sales area was around 3.9218 million square meters, down by approximately 11.9%.
The cumulative contracted sales amount accounted for 77.9% of the 2024 sales target of 147 billion yuan, indicating that Yuexiu Real Estate did not achieve its sales target for the previous year.
At the same time, Yuexiu Real Estate also revealed its sales performance for January of this year.
Data showed that in January, the company achieved contracted sales of about 6.601 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 0.9%; the contracted sales area was about 232,800 square meters, up by about 1.7%. The increase in sales area exceeded the increase in sales amount, suggesting a decline in selling prices.
Of note, the “China Real Estate Report” on January 8 reported that a significant wave of “land retreat” was sweeping through various cities nationwide, including Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Ningbo, and other first and second-tier cities.
In this wave, real estate giants such as Vanke, Yuexiu, and China Resources have been returning some of the land they acquired earlier but never developed to local authorities.
By the end of August 2024, Yuexiu Real Estate returned 4 plots of land within 4 days, totaling over 12 billion yuan. These plots were acquired by Yuexiu Real Estate three years ago but remained undeveloped. The compensation offered by the Guangzhou municipal government was in the form of equivalent promissory notes, which Yuexiu Real Estate could use to continue purchasing land in Guangzhou.
Experts interviewed in the report all predicted that the trend of real estate companies “retreating land” would increase in 2025. From hoarding land to giving it back, the rules of the game in the Chinese property market are undergoing profound changes.
Established in Hong Kong in 1985, the Yuexiu Group is one of the largest state-owned enterprises in Guangzhou in terms of asset size. It operates six listed platforms, including Yuexiu Capital, Yuexiu Real Estate, Yuexiu Transport Infrastructure, Yuexiu Property Fund, Yuexiu Services, and Huaxia Yuexiu High-Speed REIT.