Flood of discounted auction homes deepens China’s property slump - Asia Times
One wonders what will be the longer-term ramifications of this decline in property prices – in a country that has a declining population and no meaningful social security safety net? One thing is for sure – China needs to keep exporting to maintain jobs and incomes.
China’s residential property prices kept falling this year as a surge in court-ordered auction homes flooded the market with steep discounts, deepening buyer wariness and stalling any signs of recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.
Data from China Index Academy, a real estate research institute, showed the number of properties listed for court-ordered auction across 355 Chinese cities reached 539,000 in the first seven months of the year, up 23.7% from a year earlier. …
“As of April 2026, 8 million people nationwide were officially listed as loan defaulters after they missed mortgage payments,” says a columnist who writes under the pen name Property Observer. “About 60% of these mortgage defaulters are under the age of 35.” …
Nationwide, 245,000 residential properties were listed for court auction in the first seven months of 2026, and 89,000 of them found buyers – a clearance rate of 36.2%. …