(Yicai) Jan. 9 -- The overall housing consumption in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei province, is expected to grow more than 10 percent this year, according to the director of the Market Research Center of China Index Academy (Central China).

As long as the macroeconomic situation stabilizes and consumer willingness increases, the cumulative effects of a series of real estate policies will gradually become visible, boosting Wuhan’s housing market, Li Guozheng told Yicai.

A total of 242,900 first- and second-hand houses were sold in Wuhan last year, up more than 10 percent from the year before, Yicai learned. New house sales fell 9.8 percent, while second-hand home sales soared nearly 40 percent.

Last May, Wuhan held an online and offline housing fair and introduced preferential measures, which promoted the transaction of 14,088 houses, an increase of 88 percent from a year earlier. The city lifted its housing consumption restrictions in September and held the Autumn Housing Fair in October. Thanks to these two factors, housing transactions reached 12,099 units in October, up 60 percent from a year ago.

However, in other months, the new housing market in Wuhan did not perform well. In the third quarter of last year, the number of new house transactions signed online was below 7,200 each month. In November, the figure fell 50 percent to 5,802 from a year earlier.

The second-hand housing market in Wuhan performed better last year because the easing of purchase restrictions increased the popularity of homes in the main urban areas, as families were allowed to buy second-hand apartments in high-quality areas in the city center, Li noted.

With regards to the land market, a total of 244 pieces of land were sold in Wuhan last year, achieving a total transaction value of CNY89.6 billion (USD12.5 billion), down 4.3 percent from the previous year.

Editor: Futura Costaglione