About this Newsletter: Get a quick but more granular view of (still) one of the most important sectors in China, with the weekly chart and commentary from Real Estate Foresight (REF) - drawing on 14+ years of REF's research on China housing markets.

It's not often that the official data (interpreted directly without caveats) may indicate that the market situation is worse than it actually is.

In China property, that's the case with the estimates of how big is the overhang of the residential units that had been pre-sold but not delivered. To be clear - this indeed has been the biggest problem in the market, and the focal point of the policy, but the scale of it was over-estimated by many.

Taken at face value, the data would indicate a huge cumulative gap - this is where the 'big number' estimates come from:

But these data points are subject to heavy caveats and interpretation - ranging from data definitions and collection methods, separate data processes (sales and completions), artificial reporting delays, overstated sales, and a few others. There is also a 'natural' overhang with a 24-36 month time-frame for construction that may not yet be 'problematic'.

When China housing downturn started mid-2021, the policy focus quickly turned to ensuring delivery of pre-sold homes.

It's hard to estimate the real figure, but according to the 'Guaranteed Delivery' scheme officials (Source: https://m.chinanews.com.cn/wap/detail/chs/zw/10538683.shtml / MoHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development) data):

“As of October 2025, over 7.5 million units of sold but difficult-to-deliver housing across the country have been successfully delivered."

“(…) the task of ensuring housing delivery for 2025 has been fully completed.”

Other bottom-up indicators suggest this problem is indeed gradually being solved, with a reminder not to confuse this issue with the separate problem of oversupply of unsold homes, and the stock of sold, completed, but 'empty' units.