China Property: In the coming 2 weeks, as Real Estate Foresight (REF), we will host our 12th Annual China Property Outlook - a mix of private meetings, a webinar, and the annual forecast report for 2024 for the China housing markets.

To kick off, the first chart below shows what the senior industry participants gathered in person in early 2023 at our 11th annual event in Hong Kong predicted (the black lines) for the new home sales in 2023 ... vs what actually happened (in red).

Unlike 2022, when no one got any close to the actual extent of the decline (see the second chart below), the 2023 'wisdom of crowds' played out quite well.

But there was a major data twist. Due to the official revisions of the 2022 data from March to December, progressively announced month by month throughout 2023, the actual starting point for 2023 was much lower. A year ago, the official figures put the 2022 decline at -27%. After the revisions, it was -34%. 2023 ended at -8.2%.

Note that we focus here on a particular metric for the national-level new home ('commercial residential') sales in Gross Floor Area, as published monthly by the NBS - and calculate for the 12M rolling average year-on-year figure. It serves as a good starting point for more detailed discussions.

More about 2023 and 2024 forecasts over the next 2 weeks.