(Yicai Global) Jan. 31 -- This year’s Chinese New Year holiday saw new housing projects viewings and deals in some first- and second-tier cities in China recover compared with the comparable period of last year, Securities Times reported Chen Wenjing, research director of the China Index Academy, as saying.

In the short term, these cities will have strong housing demand and are expected to take the lead in property market recovery, Chen said, according to the report published today.

The average number of visits to projects in many key cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Xi’an rose compared with that during last year’s Chinese New Year, China Index Academy research showed. Though most buyers maintained a wait-and-see attitude, with transaction volumes relatively small.

Monitoring data from Zhuge House Hunter showed that second-tier cities such as Dalian, Nanning, Qingdao, Jinan, and Yangzhou saw more deals than the comparable period in 2022.

Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, sold 120 homes, significantly more than in the same period of last year. Jinan and Yangzhou sold 62 and 23, respectively, whereas there were zero transactions in both cities during the lunar new year holiday last year.

According to Chen, the property market has shown an intensified differentiation and it will take longer for most cities to recover.

The report also quoted Zhang Dawei, chief analyst of Centaline, as saying that compared with previous years, most projects will open in 2023, so the market as a whole will still have a certain transaction volume. With the implementation of multiple rounds of favorable policies, the market is expected to stabilize and recover from next month to March.

Chen Xiao, a senior analyst at Zhuge House Hunter, said that with the economic recovery accelerating, suppressed demand for homes is expected to be unleashed.

Editor: Peter Thomas