Most of the luxury real estate projects in Beijing are seeing poor sales even in the back-to-boom market, say industry insiders.
According to the Beijing Times, almost 70 percent of the properties for sale in the 30 most expensive projects are still on the market, where some have languished for over four years.
Based on figures released by the Beijing real estate trading management website, new home sales increased 7.3 percent in August over the previous month, while used homes grew 14.3 percent in the same period.
While many property analysts said the property market in Beijing has been “going back to boom”, sales of luxury housing are the exception.
Xia Gong Fu, a residential project that features 72 apartments and is located in the Wangfujing area, has created a new record for its “sky-high” price of 100,000 yuan per sq m.
A saleswoman with the development who asked for anonymity said that while many have expressed interest on the project, only few have decided to buy.
“We only arrange six groups of guests to visit the show flat every day and each group is limited to fewer than three people,” she said.
“No Western expatriates are calling us and most of the visitors are Chinese, plus a few overseas Chinese.”
As of Wednesday, none of the 72 apartments in the complex had been snapped up, according to the most recent information on the Beijing real estate trading management website.
The sale of high-end property is different from low- and middle-end housing because of the difficulty of matching supply and demand, said Zhang Yue, a market analyst with Homelink.
“Luxury property buyers already own houses, so the sales cycle of such projects are normally several times longer than low-end residential projects,” said Zhang.