China officials have directed a wave of stimulus measures at the country’s beleaguered property market, but the effort hasn’t done much to impress Wall Street experts.
On Thursday, China unveiled new measures to prop up its flailing housing market, including quicker access to credit for developers and renovations in run-down urban areas.
The government’s “white list” of unfinished housing projects eligible for government financing will now receive more funds to encourage banks to increase lending to those projects, the Ministry of Housing said in a press conference.
The funds will amount to 4 trillion yuan ($550 billion) by the end of the year, almost double the current quota of 2.2 trillion yuan.
The Housing Ministry also unveiled plans to update the country’s run-down downtown areas, or “urban villages,” with a million apartment renovations planned.
While the efforts appear to be a big swing attempt by Beijing to remedy an issue at the heart of its economic crisis, analysts on Wall Street have been underwhelmed.
Experts from Goldman Sachs, BCA Research, and AXA Investment Managers this week struck a pessimistic tone on the potential for the new policies to revive China’s property sector.
Goldman Sachs analysts said the measures may slightly help real estate financing, home completions, home transactions, and prices in large cities, but they won’t be enough to combat the market’s structural issues.
“Given many structural challenges in the property sector and still-limited policy support for housing destocking, we maintain our view that there appears no quick fix for the nationwide property sector,” Goldman Sachs said in a Friday note.
Analysts from BCA Research echoed that view, saying the plan’s details were “underwhelming.”
They pointed in particular to the latest aims at the country’s “white list” project loans, which they say haven’t been successful so far amid a fragmented property market and banks’ hesitation to lend to risky projects.
They also said the apartment renovation plan lacks detail and mirrors a similar program introduced in 2015, which aimed to renovate 6 million units annually for several years. The latest plan, though, provides no clear timeline.
The analysts also warned the country’s flailing economy could even lead to a global recession.
“While a step in the right direction, these stimulus measures are so far falling short of the scope and scale needed to reflate the Chinese economy. The stimulus announced should put a floor on activity sometime in 2025, but we expect it will be too little, too late to prevent a global recession,” the analysts said in a Friday note.
Thursday’s new policies helped fuel a rally in the CSI 300 index, which climbed 3.6% on Friday.
But Yingrui Wang, China economist at AXA Investment Managers, says that optimism could be short-lived as the housing stimulus lacks detail.
“The recent monetary easing measures initially boosted sentiment in the equity market, and today’s launch of the PBoC’s stock buy-back re-lending facility has fuelled renewed momentum. However, delays and a lack of detail in fiscal policy may soon temper this optimism,” Wang said in a Friday note.
The market rally was also helped by new growth figures, which show the economy expanded 4.6% in the third quarter, compared with the same period last year. That marks a slight slowdown from the 4.7% growth in the second quarter, but narrowly beat forecasts of 4.5% growth.
The latest figure brings year-to-date growth to 4.8% — just shy of the country’s annual target of “around 5%.”
Wang says the most recent numbers make China’s growth target more likely. Up until the country’s initial stimulus push, first announced at the end of last month, Wang predicted Beijing’s goal looked increasingly lofty.
