After winning the sales championship, how long can Songzhuang outside the Sixth Ring Road stay "hot"?

Beijing's new home transaction data for August has been released.

Overall, 3008 new residential units were traded, a slight 1.05% month-on-month drop but a 14.81% year-on-year increase. Among all projects, steady-sale properties including Maoyuan Yanyun Tai and Zijing Chenyuan maintained stable de-selling, while ordinary residential projects such as Greentown Langyue Hefeng and Beiqing Runfu also launched new units one after another.

However, the market focus unexpectedly fell on the Beitou Hejing project in Tongzhou.

Source: Jinglou Real Estate

01

On August 22, Beitou Hejing opened for pre-sale for the first time, launching 526 units. As of August 31, in just over a week, its online signing volume reached 269 units with a transaction value of 1.174 billion yuan, winning the double monthly championship of Beijing's residential property market. With a de-selling rate exceeding 51%, this performance is quite eye-catching among new Beijing properties this year, enough to rank among top popular market projects such as China State Construction Yunhe Jiuyuan.

No one expected that it was a complete "unpopular pick" when the land was auctioned half a year ago. On February 3, its predecessor, the FZX-0703-6002 plot in Songzhuang Town, Tongzhou, was put up for auction. Since only the Beitou consortium registered for bidding, it finally won the plot at the reserve price.

There was no competition when acquiring the land. Before the opening, the market was not optimistic about it either.

For one thing, the project is located in Songzhuang outside the 6th Ring Road, not in the core area of Tongzhou. This area was famous as the "Painter's Village" in the past, but there is no subway access up to now, and the urban interface is relatively average. Although supporting facilities such as Anzhen Hospital have been settled in recent years, its presence in the entire Tongzhou property market is still very low.

For another, its developer is Beitou Real Estate, which was established only in 2014. Its parent company is Beitou Group, whose business focus has always been on urban infrastructure construction, municipal engineering and other fields. It has relatively limited experience in commercial residential development, and its project operation capacity is also in doubt. In recent years, Beitou has only launched a small number of residential projects in Tongzhou such as Shengjing Tinglan and Beitou Qiyunwan, whose market performance is not very ideal. Taking Shengjing Tinglan as an example, it has been nearly three years since the project opened, and its de-selling rate is only close to half.

Although market expectations were relatively cold, Beitou Hejing went against the trend and became popular.

Timing is probably the first dividend it seized. Since China Overseas Jiushu Manhe opened for sale in March, the new home supply gap in Tongzhou has lasted for nearly half a year. The China Merchants Huying Tianqing project in the Jiukeshu block is still in the customer reservation stage, and there is still some time before its opening. Beitou Hejing entered the market at the end of August, just filling the new home supply gap in Tongzhou.

On the most basic product development level, Beitou seems not to have held back this time. The plot ratio of Beitou Hejing is 1.8, and compared with the previous new projects in Tongzhou with a general plot ratio of around 2.5, its low-density advantage is very obvious. The 30 buildings planned in the community are almost 8-11 storey villa-style residences, with main unit types ranging from two-bedroom to four-bedroom. With free extra space, the comprehensive utilization rate is about 95%, and the three-sided wide unit design also keeps up with the mainstream level of the current market.

Of course, the more critical factor lies in the price. The record price of Beitou Hejing is around 45,000 yuan / ㎡, with the highest exceeding 47,000 yuan / ㎡, but its average transaction price is only 40,400 yuan / ㎡, lower than the average transaction price of about 45,000 yuan / ㎡ in Tongzhou. Compared with the Wuyi Huayuan block 2 kilometers away from the project in a straight line, the listing price of some second-hand new houses exceeds 45,100 yuan / ㎡, and the price of new houses is also above 43,000 yuan / ㎡.

For local customers in the sub-center, with the unit price of 40,000 yuan / ㎡, only 15 minutes' drive from Beijing Municipal Government, plus the high-quality living circle formed by surrounding civil servant communities, the attraction of the project is self-evident.

02

This round of property market boom initiated by Beitou Hejing is not the first time Songzhuang has become a market highlight.

In 2021, Gemdale Beijing One Block in northern Songzhuang became the protagonist of the regional property market at that time. Back then, its first-day opening sales reached 1.2 billion yuan, it topped the Tongzhou new home online signing value ranking in 2022, and in 2023 it won the double champion of unit sales and transaction area with a performance of nearly 800 units sold and more than 5 billion yuan in transaction value.

Its continuous popularity back then shares the same underlying logic as the current popularity of Beitou Hejing.

Both are low-density villa-style residences with a plot ratio of 1.6-1.8, priced at only around 43,000 yuan / ㎡, creating a clear price gap with the new properties in Tongzhou core area priced at over 60,000 yuan / ㎡ at that time. Coupled with the 10 percentage points higher usable area ratio than the market average, and its positioning as the only new property for first-time home buyers and first-time upgraders in northern Songzhuang at that time, all these factors contributed to its phenomenal popularity back then.

From these two hot sales in Songzhuang, it is not hard to see that for a block to produce a "hit property", the three elements of excellent product quality, low price and scarce supply are almost indispensable.

Other market entrants also verify this logic. Beijing Urban Construction Guoyusong, which is also located in northern Songzhuang, has a unit price of about 40,000 yuan / ㎡, and it has been about a year and a half since its opening, its online signing de-selling rate has been close to 64%. However, since Gemdale Beijing One Block entered the market earlier, its scarcity in the region has weakened, but with ultra-high free extra space, it still attracted a large number of customers.

While Jiantou Guomao · Jinshang, which entered the market one year earlier than it, has a much less impressive performance. Although its opening price was less than 40,000 yuan / ㎡, it had insufficient scarcity and uncompetitive product quality, plus limited brand influence, its de-selling speed was slow from the initial stage, more than two years after its launch, its online signing volume is still less than half of the total units.

Nowadays, Beitou Hejing has reignited the popularity of the block, but how long this popularity can last may be the real concern of the market.

In terms of supply, Beitou Hejing itself has sufficient inventory - about 270 units of the first launched batch are still on sale, and another 320 units have not obtained pre-sale certification, the total unsold units of the whole project are about 590. Given the current product competitiveness and price advantage of the project, sustained de-selling will not be a problem.

In addition, about 600 meters to the east of Beitou Hejing, there is another new residential project waiting to be launched - Shoukai Xiyue Jingyan.

Location of the two projects

In terms of product design, it highly overlaps with Beitou Hejing. Its unit types are about 79-166 ㎡, which has a very high overlap with the 85-149 ㎡ unit types of Beitou Hejing. In addition, the plot ratio of Shoukai Xiyue Jingyan reaches 2.3, higher than the 1.8 of Beitou Hejing, so its living comfort is not as good as the latter.

Not only that, its transaction floor price is about 2000 yuan / ㎡ higher than that of Beitou Hejing. Although the selling price has not been determined, it is most likely not lower than the latter.

In the Songzhuang block, the product of Shoukai Xiyue Jingyan has its highlights, but its market entry pace is relatively passive. It acquired the land two months later than Beitou Hejing. Beitou Hejing, which entered the market earlier, has already locked in a large number of local customers. After the China Merchants · Huying Tianqing project in Tongzhou Jiukeshu enters the market later, it may divert a small number of upgraded customer groups. For Shoukai Xiyue Jingyan with a total supply of about 770 units, it has insufficient "scarcity", no clear "low price" advantage, and its customer flow is divided, so its future sales will hardly be easy.

However, the de-selling pressure of individual projects does not mean that the Songzhuang block will weaken. With the construction of the sub-center advancing, more than 80 municipal government organs have settled down, and about 30,000 administrative staff of the district-level government have moved in one after another. Songzhuang, with convenient commuting and high cost performance, may become one of the housing choices for these people.

But in the future, after this part of housing demand is gradually consumed, what else can Songzhuang rely on to maintain its popularity?

The answer is not yet clear, but the new home supply in Songzhuang has started to increase significantly.

On September 8, a low-density residential plot in northern Songzhuang with a plot ratio of only 1.05 will be officially auctioned. Judging from the requirements such as the 18-meter height limit, it will definitely be built into upgraded products such as stacked townhouses or courtyard residences in the future.

New plot in Songzhuang

It is not easy for Songzhuang, whose basic market is first-time home buyers and first-time upgraders, to support high-end upgraded properties. Referring to the long de-selling cycle of the nearby Grace Town, the de-selling path of the new Songzhuang plot will not be smooth.

This article is from WeChat official account "Future Habitat", author: Future Habitat, published with authorization from 36Kr.