China tells stats providers to halt home sales data publication

TWO of China’s private data agencies withheld monthly home sales figures at the government’s behest, sources said, adding challenges to transparency in a critical sector of the world’s second-largest economy.

China Real Estate Information and China Index Academy, which are among the country’s biggest private property data providers, did not disclose the combined sales of the nation’s 100 largest developers for November on Sunday (Nov 30).

The two agencies, which usually release the data on the last day of every month, were told by China’s housing bureau to suspend making such figures publicly available until further notice, sources said, requesting not to be named because the matter is private.

Financial institutions that paid for the data will still have access to it, provided they keep the data confidential, said one of the sources.

The housing ministry did not immediately offer a comment when reached on Monday.

The delayed data disclosure comes as China Vanke – long considered one of the sector’s healthier firms – sought to postpone the repayment on a local bond for the first time last week.

Vanke’s surprise move adds to the industry’s woes after years of falling sales and massive defaults by China Evergrande Group, Country Garden Holdings and others.

The missing housing data “could increase uncertainty about the struggling sector’s condition”, Kristy Hung, a senior real estate analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a Monday note. “The November data would likely show steeper declines.” 

The private data sets are important gauges of the new-home market as they are usually published two or three weeks before the official data. The government typically releases the monthly new property sales in the third week of every month. 

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In October, China Real Estate Information’s reading suggested that new home sales for the country’s top 100 builders decreased 41.9 per cent from a year earlier, the biggest monthly drop in 18 months, Bloomberg calculations show.

November’s figures will be closely scrutinised as they will be against a high base a year earlier, following a stimulus blitz from the government. 

Global banks remain pessimistic on China’s property market, which has faced renewed sales weakness since the second quarter.

UBS expects home prices to keep falling for at least two more years. The value of used homes has also dropped sharply, down more than a third from peak levels in major cities, it said. 

Fitch Ratings warned in October that new-home sales by area could decline another 15 to 20 per cent before the sector stabilises. The bleak outlook suggests that the banks’ property-related bad debt will likely stay “elevated” next year, Fitch said.

China Real Estate Information and China Index Academy did not offer comments when reached on Monday. BLOOMBERG