Property developers on the Chinese mainland are expected to offer new incentives to encourage people to buy apartments and office buildings — after Hong Kong-listed China Evergrande Group received deposits for nearly 50,000 homes during a recent online marketing campaign.
To counter the adverse impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on the property market, it is believed that more mainland developers will slash property prices in the short-term to boost market share, explained Clement Luk, chief executive at Centaline for Eastern China.
To counter the adverse impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on the property market, it is believed that more mainland developers will slash property prices in the short-term to boost market share
Clement Luk, chief executive at Centaline for Eastern China
China Evergrande, the third-largest developer on the mainland in terms of sales, said in a statement that the total value of contracted sales commitments secured by deposits reached around 58 billion yuan (US$8 million) in the first three days of its campaign — which started on Feb 13— higher than the 40.6 billion yuan in January.
Buyers pay a deposit of 5,000 yuan and they obtain a refund without any reason before May 10. If they decide to buy a property at that time, the deposit can be used to cover 20,000 yuan of the total price.
Evergrande said it would offer another 25 percent discount for all properties on sales from Feb 18 until the end of February. After then, the discount will be narrowed to 22 percent in March for all properties including offices and commercial properties.
An employee at Evergrande said these were just routine marketing methods and there was no specific reason for the price reductions this time.
Luk said Evergrande was responding quite quickly this time, but added that other developers were likely to catch up with it through online sales.
Sunac China Holdings had said that buyers who subscribed for certain property projects in more than 100 cities on the mainland before March 31 could get a refund if they decide to call off the deal within one month.
Fantasia Holdings and Greenland Holdings have also adopted similar measures and additional promotions relating to down payments and mortgages.
Chinese property developers and realtors are turning to virtual reality salesrooms and live-streaming marketing on social media platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, as their physical offices had to shut down because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Twenty of the top 100 developers have done live-streaming sales since the epidemic outbreak, property researcher CRIC said, adding that 92 of them operate online sales platforms.
