ust published to clients the Real Estate Foresight's monthly China Property report for July. Land sales (or land acquisitions by developers) is one of the key indicators of market conditions in the market for new home sales (which is the vast majority of the China property market), but gauging the land market dynamics can be confusing and easy to misinterpret or oversimplify unless you look at the more complete range of metrics and definitions.

The two charts below show a selection of these - in terms of the year-to-date y/y growth rates for different aggregates, for different measures (planned GFA vs construction area vs RMB value).

The residential (incl. mixed-use with residential) land sales for 340 cities are down (-17.1%) in planned GFA but up (+9.8%) in RMB value for January-June vs the equivalent in 2020, and that's probably the most important of these metrics overall. But for the 22 major cities under the new land sales rules, the growth is positive in both planned GFA and value.  

With the control over land supply, there is much less systemic risk, even though individual developers or projects may be under more pressures under the tighter policy.