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as the traditional off-season for sales, real estate companies' performance continued to be sluggish in august as expected.

sales data released by third-party research institution cric showed that in august, the top 100 real estate developers achieved sales of 251.2 billion yuan, a decrease of 10% month-on-month, and the monthly performance scale continued to remain at a historically low level; it was still declining year-on-year, with a drop of about 26.8%.

in terms of cumulative performance, the top 100 real estate developers achieved sales of 2.3821 trillion yuan from january to july. although it still fell by 36.5% year-on-year, the decline narrowed by 1 percentage point, and has been narrowing for six consecutive months.

specifically speaking of the performance of enterprises, poly development ranked first in the industry with a sales volume of rmb 220.8 billion, leading the second-placed china overseas land & investment by about rmb 40 billion; vanke and china resources land followed closely behind china overseas with sales of rmb 163.7 billion and rmb 155.4 billion respectively. the sales volume of china merchants shekou and greentown also exceeded rmb 100 billion, ranking fifth and sixth in the industry respectively.

there are also six real estate companies whose full-caliber sales exceeded 100 billion yuan in the first eight months of this year, which is six fewer than the same period last year. at the same time, the number of real estate companies with sales of over 10 billion yuan is only 56, while there were 94 in the same period last year.

the continuous shrinking of sales scale has also caused severe damage to the financial performance of real estate companies whose main business is residential development and sales.

take vanke, a leading enterprise, for example. in the first half of this year, the company's operating income fell by 28.9% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was a loss of 9.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 199.8%. one of the main reasons for the performance loss was the decline in the settlement scale and gross profit margin of the development business.

according to monitoring data from china index academy, the 105 a+h-share real estate companies that have announced their 2024 interim results had an average operating income of 11.591 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 13%, and an average net profit of 145 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 82.05%.

among them, 72 companies saw a year-on-year decline in revenue, 87 companies saw a year-on-year decline in net profit, and 50 real estate companies suffered losses; 24 companies suffered losses for the first time since the epidemic.

according to the analysis of china index academy, under the background of weak market demand, falling housing prices and intensified market competition, real estate companies' sales have been hindered, and "trading price for volume" has become a common means of destocking, which has led to insufficient growth momentum in revenue scale and pressure on profit levels. at the same time, real estate companies continue to make provisions for impairment of investment properties and inventory, which has also eroded the industry's profit level to a certain extent.

this trend will continue for some time to come. cric believes that the pressure on profits will continue due to market adjustments and the transfer of sales resources from low-gross-profit projects to delivery.

the above-mentioned institution continued that in the future, real estate companies should actively improve product quality to gain stronger market adaptability. for example, they can improve the residential value of products through the refined design of apartment plans, enhance cultural value through the integration of products, blocks and cities, achieve product and image premium, and help improve corporate sales performance and profits with better sales rates and product premium capabilities.

creating good products is also a consensus gradually formed by real estate companies in the process of building a new development model at a time when the industry is undergoing profound adjustments.

in the view of lin zhaoyuan, chairman and executive director of yuexiu real estate, the new development model of the real estate industry is that the government will take the lead in providing affordable housing, while enterprises will operate the market-oriented housing. in the future, the industry should return to the attribute of "good housing", and good products and good services should be the mainstream of the market.

yu liang, chairman of vanke's board of directors, mentioned at a recent mid-term performance meeting that as the supply and demand relationship of the real estate industry has undergone fundamental changes, the key factors of market competition have changed from scale to product strength and service strength, that is, providing consumers with high-quality housing. today, the industry's product iteration speed has accelerated to a new generation every 3 or 4 months.

zhang hai, co-president of vanke and chief partner of the development and operation department, also said that at present, the supply and demand relationship in the housing market has undergone major changes. one of them is that various types of rental housing and talent housing have provided more options to solve the housing problems of people in urgent need, and improved products that meet customers' demands for higher quality of life have occupied an increasingly important position in the new housing market.

this is also one of the factors that have kept high-end residential properties in the overall cold market. in the first half of this year, many places have seen a series of day-sold or hot-selling properties, which directly boosted the sales performance of real estate companies.

for example, from march to june, china overseas land & investment launched high-end projects in shanghai, shenzhen and beijing, among which shunchang jiuli even achieved a sales performance of 19.65 billion yuan. the above-mentioned luxury housing products in beijing, shanghai and shenzhen helped china overseas achieve sales of nearly 50 billion yuan in the first half of the year.

even in yiwu, a county-level city, luxury housing projects are popular. a high-end project under greentown has a total sales of over 3.5 billion yuan. shui on land, which has been deeply rooted in shanghai, also plans to launch green lake phase vi and green lake riverside in the second half of this year to boost sales.

cric predicts that with the arrival of the traditional marketing peak season in september, real estate developers will increase their launch and marketing efforts, and overall transactions in september may increase month-on-month.

china index academy also believes that with the arrival of the traditional peak season of "golden september and silver october", the activity of the new housing market in core cities may pick up slightly in the short term, but the sharp reduction in land supply in the early stage may restrict the supply capacity of real estate companies, thereby dragging down the recovery of sales. however, under the "price-for-volume" policy, the second-hand housing market in core cities is expected to maintain a certain level of activity.