Chinese property crashes through the floor

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It is amusing to watch, in the usual dark way, as Chinese authorities butcher their response to the property crash that they themselves triggered (quite rightly, I might add). I am not sure why the attempted rescues are so badly structured but the import of it is that there is no end in sight.

New property sales by land area are now down by 60% year on year and developer spreads are still paralytic. Both are still trending worse:

Most market observers have sales at -10-20% at worst for this year. Even if we see an H2 recovery of scale, in part owing to easing lockdowns, we are still looking at more like -30-40%.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.