China’s real estate giant, Country Garden Holdings Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Country Garden”), released unaudited operational data for December 2024 on the evening of January 7. The data shows that the real estate giant saw a drop of approximately 73% in sales revenue for the full year of 2024.
According to the announcement, Country Garden’s contract sales revenue in December 2024 was about 3.42 billion yuan (RMB), a 50.51% decrease from the same period in 2023 when it was 6.91 billion yuan. In terms of contracted sales floor area, it was around 350,000 square meters in December 2024, a 48.53% decrease from 680,000 square meters in the same period in 2023.
Cumulatively, in 2024, Country Garden achieved a contract sales revenue of about 47.17 billion yuan attributed to shareholders’ equity and a total contracted sales floor area of approximately 4.922 million square meters.
Data previously released by Country Garden showed that in December 2023, the company achieved a monthly contract sales revenue of about 6.91 billion yuan and an annual equity sales revenue of 174.28 billion yuan in 2023.
This means that the contract sales revenue for December 2024 was halved, resulting in a 73% decrease in annual sales revenue for the year. Some Chinese industry insiders have referred to this as a “Country Garden sales explosion.”
On January 6, Country Garden held its first monthly management meeting for 2025. Country Garden’s Board Chairperson, Yang Huiyan, stated at the meeting that the core focus for the year 2025 will still be on ensuring the delivery of properties and repairing the balance sheet.
In mid-October 2023, Country Garden officially defaulted on a maturing USD bond due to the inability to pay interest, plunging the group into a debt crisis. Months later, Country Garden announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that its creditors had filed a winding-up petition with the court involving up to 1.6 billion HKD in unpaid term loans and interest.
Public data shows that as of the end of 2023, Country Garden’s total debt was around 13.6 trillion yuan, second only to Evergrande’s 23.8 trillion yuan among various real estate companies.
Apart from Country Garden, the performance of China’s top 100 real estate companies in 2024 also saw a significant decline.
According to data released at the beginning of this month by the China Index Research Institute, the total sales of the top 100 real estate companies declined by 30.6% year-on-year from January to December 2024.
In terms of the number of companies in different sales scale categories, the number of companies with sales exceeding ten billion yuan continued to decrease in 2024. The average sales target completion rate for real estate enterprises in the first half of the year was 86.0%. In terms of land acquisition in the property market, the total land acquisition by the top 100 companies decreased by 29.7% in 2024 compared to the previous year.
Liu Shui, Director of Corporate Research at the China Index Research Institute, analyzed that overall, from 2020 to 2024, the total land acquisition amount of the top 100 enterprises showed a downward trend, with 2024 being less than 30% of the amount in 2020. Particularly, land acquisition by private real estate enterprises sharply decreased, closely related to the downturn in the real estate market, tightened financing environment, and frequent defaults by private real estate enterprises.