In recent years, the real estate market in China has continued to slump. According to the latest official data, in June, the prices of new and existing homes in 70 major cities in China continued to decline both year-on-year and month-on-month, with the existing home market still maintaining a trend of “trading volume for price”.
On the morning of July 15th, the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China released the data on the price changes of commercial residential properties in 70 major cities in June 2026.
The data shows that for new homes, in the first-tier cities, the sales prices of newly constructed commercial residential properties decreased by 1.3% year-on-year. Among them, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen saw declines of 2.1%, 2.6%, and 3.6% respectively, while Shanghai saw a 3.1% increase. In the second-tier cities, the sales prices of newly constructed commercial residential properties decreased by 3.1% year-on-year, with a slight decrease of 0.1 percentage points. In the third-tier cities, the sales prices of newly constructed commercial residential properties decreased by 4.2% year-on-year, the same as the previous month.
Looking at the month-on-month changes, the prices of new homes in first-tier cities increased by 0.1% from the previous month, with a decrease of 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous month. Among them, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen saw increases of 0.3%, 0.2%, and 0.3%, while Beijing saw a decrease of 0.3%. The prices of new homes in second-tier cities remained unchanged compared to the previous month, while in third-tier cities, there was a 0.3% decrease month-on-month, a narrowing of 0.1 percentage points from the previous month.
Li Yujia, Chief Researcher of the Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center, believes that the narrowing decline in new home prices is related to the continuous contraction of supply. According to statistics from the market institution, Ke Rui, in the first half of 2026, the cumulative new supply area in 50 typical cities nationwide decreased by 23.1% year-on-year, with the supply scale only equivalent to 43% of the same period in 2023. Some cities have reduced land supply while increasing supply in core areas and improved residential land, which also provides structural support for new home prices.
Yan Yuejin, Deputy Director of the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, calculated the simple arithmetic mean of the data from 70 cities and found that the prices of new homes in June decreased by 0.2% month-on-month and 3.5% year-on-year.
The drop in prices of existing homes reflects an even larger decline compared to new home prices.
In first-tier cities, the sales prices of existing homes dropped by 4.9% year-on-year, with declines of 5.5%, 3.2%, 6.1%, and 4.7% in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen respectively. In second and third-tier cities, the sales prices of existing homes dropped by 5.4% and 6.0% year-on-year respectively, with decreases of 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points.
Looking at the month-on-month changes, the sales prices of existing homes in first-tier cities increased by 0.3% from the previous month, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous month. In second-tier cities, the sales prices of existing homes decreased by 0.3% month-on-month, an increase of 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous month; in third-tier cities, the sales prices of existing homes decreased by 0.4% month-on-month, the same as the previous month.
Yan Yuejin stated that the current second-hand housing market is still in a process of “trading volume for price”.
According to monitoring data released by Purui Data Intelligence, the total number of listed second-hand homes in 15 typical cities in June was 1.9 million units, which has been steadily decreasing over the past two years, a 16% decrease from the scale of 2.26 million units in December 2025.
Analyzing the trend, the number of listed second-hand homes in the 15 cities has gradually increased since June 2023, peaked in December 2025, and significantly declined by June 2026. Over the past year, most cities among the 15 have seen fluctuating decreases in the number of listed second-hand homes, with Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Hefei, Nanjing, and Wuhan all experiencing declines of over 10%, while Tianjin and Hangzhou saw declines of more than 5%.
Chairman Ding Zuyu of Purui Data Intelligence stated that in the context of a shrinking number of listed homes, both buyers and sellers are still in a bargaining situation, and trading volume for price remains a major feature of current second-hand housing transactions.
Furthermore, data from the National Bureau of Statistics also shows that in the first half of this year, real estate development investment in China reached 3.8074 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 18.0%; of which, residential investment was 2.930 trillion yuan, down 17.8%.
From January to June, the construction area of real estate development enterprises was 55.4049 billion square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 12.5%, with residential construction area at 38.4453 billion square meters, down 12.9%; the newly started construction area of houses was 2.3239 billion square meters, down by 23.4%, and the newly started residential construction area was 1.690 billion square meters, down 24.1%.