English English

By Dai Qi

China's real estate market was stagnant during the National Day golden week this year, the Economic Information Daily reported on Monday.

Yanyan, a saleswoman for a real estate company in one of China's second-tier cities, said she was not busy during the 7-day holiday and even took two working days off.

"I have got only several groups of clients to see houses. It is very rare during recent years' holidays. Similarly, our branches in other cities have a lackluster performance as well," said Yanyan.

However, the number of clients she received per day in the previous months was dozens.

Even Sanya, one of China's most popular real estate investment destinations, was no exception.

During the 7-day golden week holiday, the exhibition hall of Sanya's real estate service center closed its door and declined to see clients, with only a few chairs and promotional materials left.

Zhang Dawei, the chief analyst of a Chinese real estate agency, the Centaline Group, said though developers had tried their very best to attract clients, few deals were made, even in popular real estate cities.

Take Suzhou city as an example, seven new housing projects opened for sale on Sept. 30, and another dozen held open house events during the 7-day holidays, but no swarm of purchasers appeared.

Statistics showed that 43,613 new houses were for sale in Suzhou, but only 290 of them were sold on Oct. 1 and 105 the next day.

The number of second-hand houses that were sold was much smaller in the same city. In the first two days of the holiday, no deals were made on the market.