China’s top real estate developer anticipates weak market in ’24

China’s top real estate developer Country Garden anticipates the Chinese real estate market to remain weak in 2024, and the possibility of facing more “severe” obstacles

Among the numerous developers experiencing financial difficulties since being impacted by a debt crisis in mid-2021 is Country Garden, which missed payments on its $11 billion worth of offshore debts in October and postponed instalments on its onshore notes the previous year.

According to the company’s official Weibo account, Yang Huiyan, the chairperson, stated during an annual internal conference on Monday, that the market was still in correction and had not recovered as anticipated from the previous year.

“The challenges to be faced by the company this year may be more severe than we imagine; we have to respond calmly,” Country Garden President Mo Bin said.

Although Yang anticipated that the market will “hover at a low level” in 2024, she also noted that there would be growing differences in outlooks between state-owned and private enterprises as well as across different cities.

Home delivery remains the primary focus this year, the business said, intending to deliver 480,000 homes to buyers, 20 per cent less than the 600,000 units it delivered in 2023, the highest in the country.

Moreover, to increase margins and save expenses, Yang said in March of last year that the company would close all of its side ventures except for contract construction, which involves building projects for other enterprises, and its construction robot business.

On Monday, Country Garden announced that it has delivered 2,890 robots to customers and has commercialised 28 different types of robots thus far.

Its contract construction unit was rated 11th in the nation in 2023 for constructed area, having completed 30 projects totalling 24.4 billion yuan.