All first-tier cities have fully implemented the detailed rules for completed home sales: land auctions have shifted from fierce competition to a stable state, and second-hand home transactions are rebounding.
"Few developers have seriously thought about this: using homebuyers' money to build apartments, while homebuyers are paying off their mortgages and renting elsewhere at the same time, and eventually have to face the risk of delayed or failed property delivery. Is this arrangement reasonable at all?" Li Yujia, Chief Researcher at the Housing Policy Research Center of Guangdong Urban & Rural Planning Institute, asked the question after participating in multiple pre-sale reform surveys.
This line of questioning is now turning into reality. On October 15, Shenzhen released the detailed rules for existing-home sales, marking the full implementation of relevant regulations in all four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It took only 21 days from Beijing taking the lead in rolling out the policy on September 24 to Shenzhen finalizing the rules on October 15.
Since the commercial housing pre-sale system was written into the *Urban Real Estate Administration Law* in 1994, three government departments issued a document in 2026 to promote existing-home sales, marking that the pre-sale system in China has gone through a full 32 years. It injected vitality into an era marked by housing shortages and capital shortages, but also left behind hidden risks such as properties that cannot be delivered as promised and delivered products that fail to match the promised standards.
Now that the detailed rules for existing-home sales have been fully implemented in all first-tier cities, what changes have the whole market, from property developers to homebuyers, finally welcomed?
32 Years of Pre-sale System Reaches a Turning Point, Market Waits for Clear Rules Amid Wait-and-See Sentiment
In 2023, Xiao Hu bought his second apartment in his life in Kunming. When the property was still only on paper, he had already started paying the mortgage, and a year later, he and his wife received the keys.
His wife, who was experiencing home buying for the first time, was dissatisfied with several pre-agreed details. However, Xiao Hu and the designer who accompanied them for the property check, who were used to various property delivery scenes, all said: for a pre-sale property, this is already a pretty decent result.
Xiao Hu's experience is almost a microcosm of countless homebuyers in the 32 years of the pre-sale system. Broken promises have become the norm, a consensus that homebuyers have long tacitly accepted.
Wu Jing, Director of the Real Estate Research Center of Tsinghua University, said that during the period of urban housing shortage, the commercial housing pre-sale system helped expand sources of development funds and rapidly increase housing supply.
"At that time, the core task of the market was to build houses as soon as possible. What homebuyers cared most about was whether they could buy a property and whether the floor area was sufficient, and they could make home buying decisions just based on a few floor plans and renderings."
In the same period, for developers, "pre-sale" was a given dividend.
Li Yujia pointed out that once upon a time, this dividend was regarded as natural, deserved and not open to discussion. Pre-sale funds were used as project construction funds. When the building structure was barely above the ground, sales return funds could be credited to the account in advance, which was almost taken for granted.
On August 28, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the State Administration of Financial Regulation jointly issued the *Notice on Improving the Commercial Housing Sales System*, deploying all regions to steadily push forward the reform of the commercial housing sales system.
The notice clarifies that all regions should effectively and orderly implement commercial housing existing-home sales to realize the "what you see is what you get" scenario, fundamentally prevent delivery risks, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of homebuyers.
The notice also proposes that all regions should improve the management of commercial housing pre-sales and standardize the pre-sale conditions for commercial housing. For commercial housing projects that implement pre-sales, the main structure of the single building must be fully capped.
The People's Daily published an article stating that this is a huge transformation for China's real estate market.
After the new policy was introduced, many developers entered a state of "waiting for detailed rules", suspending land acquisition or slowing down the development pace of projects that have not yet obtained construction planning permits. It was not until various localities introduced detailed implementation opinions that the expectations of all market participants including property developers and homebuyers for the future became clear again.
Detailed Rules for Existing-home Sales Implemented, What Are the Differences Between Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen?
Beijing took the lead in taking action.
On September 24, Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission, the National Administration of Financial Regulation Beijing Regulatory Bureau, and Beijing Housing Fund Management Center jointly issued the *Implementation Opinions on Issuing the Local Implementation of the
Beijing's detailed rules clarify the "separation of old and new cases" conditions, set "building capping" as a verifiable certification requirement, define the conditions for existing-home sales, and stipulate that the deposit collected generally shall not exceed 1% of the total housing price.
China Index Academy pointed out that compared with the principled statements in the national document, Beijing has made demonstrative operable designs in many aspects.
The other three first-tier cities, as well as cities including Wuhan, Tianjin and Hangzhou, have also followed up one after another.
Reporters from *Time Weekly* sorted out and found that there are obvious differences in the implementation rules of the four first-tier cities: first, the deposit collection ratio: Beijing collects a deposit of no more than 1% of the total housing price, Shanghai and Shenzhen no more than 3%, and Guangzhou no more than 5% at most; second, the payment period for land price: Beijing requires the remaining payment to be paid off within two years, while Shanghai requires the remaining payment to be paid off within one year, which can be extended for another year without interest upon decision, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen also adopt the "1+1" model similar to Shanghai.
The direction is similar, but the implementation scale varies. The detailed rules of the four cities all take the "August 28" new policy as the node to separate old and new cases, and all clarify "prioritizing existing-home sales", with differences concentrated in the implementation caliber. This "mostly similar with minor differences" is regarded by the industry as exactly providing a predictable reference for the market.
Yan Yuejin, Vice President of the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, told *Time Weekly* reporters that generally speaking, the logic of land transfer payment in various regions is roughly the same, with a good buffer that can reduce the pressure on enterprises in terms of corresponding payment. At the same time, planning permits can be processed according to the land transfer contract, which can better enable enterprises to start construction immediately after acquiring land and reduce some uncertainties in the development process.
Li Yujia pointed out that for legacy projects, Beijing, Guangzhou and Tianjin have consistent calibers, implementing the old pre-sale policy for ongoing projects, that is, legacy projects that have obtained the state-owned construction land use right before August 28 can be implemented in accordance with the relevant provisions for ongoing projects after risk assessment by the district governments.
"But this time, Shenzhen follows Shanghai's example and stipulates that such projects 'will be studied separately by relevant departments', and the subsequent supporting caliber remains to be clarified." Li Yujia also said that the volume of new homes in Shenzhen is the smallest among the hot first-tier and second-tier cities, with annual new home sales of only about 30,000 units, and a high proportion of second-hand housing transactions, so the pain of reform is mild.
Clear Rules: Land Market Shifts, Property Market Rebounds
With the implementation of the "existing-home sales system", the reaction of the land market has already emerged.
Six days after the "August 28" new policy was introduced, when Beijing's detailed rules for existing-home sales had not yet been issued, the Tuofangying plot was once suspended from listing for transfer. On the afternoon of September 3, Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission issued an announcement stating that the listing transaction of the Tuofangying plot was suspended.
According to media reports, this land auction was originally the first land auction in Beijing after the "August 28" new policy, attracting high market attention. Previously, the entities that signed up to participate in the bidding for this plot included China Overseas Land & Investment, the consortium of China State Construction Land + Swire Properties, and China Resources Land.
On the night of September 3, Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission stated that the listing transaction of the Tuofangying plot in Chaoyang District, which was originally scheduled to be sold on the same day, was suspended, and the transfer conditions will be further optimized in combination with the *Notice on Improving the Commercial Housing Sales System* jointly issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the State Administration of Financial Regulation on August 28.
The suspension was because the new policy had just been released, and the transfer conditions needed to be redesigned in accordance with the new regulations. The restart happened after the detailed rules finalized the regulations. From September 3 to October 15, these 42 days are exactly the complete cycle from "waiting for detailed rules" to "detailed rules being implemented".
On October 9, Beijing released the first complete list of proposed land supply after the implementation of the existing-home sales detailed rules.
On the same day, Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission released the 12th round of proposed supply list for commercial residential land, involving a total of 3 plots with a land area of about 8 hectares and a planned above-ground floor area of about 140,000 square meters, distributed in Fengtai District, Shijingshan District and Pinggu District.
After comparing the latest list with the suspended transfer of the Tuofangying plot, Yan Yuejin said that the land supply rhythm needs to match the policy adaptation period, and the land supply screening standard is shifting from "location priority" to "cash flow certainty priority".
He pointed out that generally speaking, the plot selection logic, indicator design and transfer condition arrangement of these plots collectively reflect the systematic adjustment of local governments to the land supply strategy under the framework of existing-home sales.
On October 15, a reporter from *Time Weekly* learned from Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission that the previously suspended Tuofangying plot was put on the market again: it has been split into two plots, with the total price rising to 8.3 billion yuan.
The relevant person in charge of Beijing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Commission said that Beijing will actively adapt to market changes and continuously optimize and improve the planning and design quality of the supplied plots.
On the other hand, on September 30, the day when Guangzhou's existing-home sales detailed rules were implemented, a plot in Pazhou South Area, Haizhu District, Guangzhou was transferred through bidding. After 41 rounds of bidding, Poly Real Estate won the plot with a total transaction price of about 3.817 billion yuan, with a premium rate of 26.5%.
One month before that, on August 28, China Resources Land successfully won another plot in Pazhou South Area after more than 200 rounds of fierce bidding, with a total price of 8.056 billion yuan and a premium rate of 33.02%.
According to *21st Century Business Herald*, the two plots are only 1.5 kilometers apart.
It is worth noting that the two biddings happened to fall at two ends of the policy chain: one on the day the "August 28" new policy was released, and the other on the day Guangzhou's detailed rules were implemented. After the rules became clear, the bidding became more prudent: the implementation of the detailed rules did not cool down the land auction, but made the market shift from "blind snatching" to "rational calculation". Although the conditions of the two plots are not exactly the same, judging from the gap between the number of bidding rounds and the premium rate, property developers' bidding is obviously more restrained.
A person from a local Guangzhou property developer said that this is a manifestation of developers returning to rationality.
Beyond the land market, the reaction on the sales side is more direct. Data from multiple institutions shows that the second-hand housing market in Shenzhen has rebounded significantly during the National Day holiday. According to the monitoring of Shenzhen Shell Research Institute, during the seven days of the National Day holiday, the real-time contracted volume of second-hand housing in Shenzhen increased by 63% year-on-year, and increased by 45% on the average daily basis. In the first week after the holiday, according to the statistics of the Shenzhen Real Estate Agents Association, 1178 second-hand housing transactions were recorded in the whole city, up 82.1% month-on-month.
Not only in Shenzhen, institutional monitoring shows that in the first six days of the National Day holiday, the transaction volume of second-hand housing in 25 cities increased by 53% year-on-year, of which the first-tier cities increased by 52% year-on-year.
In Yan Yuejin's view, the intensive implementation of policies itself has answered some of the market's questions. He said that the implementation of the "August 28" new policy detailed rules in various regions has formed an intensive effect.
"Now the policies in various regions have similarities, which can enable everyone to have good market expectations. In the future, more attention should be paid to land supply in various regions. How land should be supplied in the future is very critical, especially to provide some land with low cost and good construction conditions, so as to better stabilize the entire real estate market and better promote some model innovations in the whole process," Yan Yuejin said.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Time Weekly" (ID: timeweekly), written by Wang Chenyuan, and authorized for release by 36Kr.