(Yicai Global) June 15 -- At a time of year when Chinese developers would normally be slashing prices and promoting new developments to improve their semi-annual performance, this year many feel it is useless to try hard to promote sales amid a lackluster market, industry insiders said.

"Developers used to work hard at this time of the year to post a better first-half performance, but they are not willing to make an effort this year as it is pointless," a source from a top real estate firm told Yicai Global.

Suzhou’s real estate firms are not being very active in promoting new developments compared with this time in previous years, the marketing head of a development in Suzhou, eastern Jiangsu province told Yicai Global. They are offering their usual discounts but no further cuts.

Except for some popular new properties in downtown Suzhou, developers are not promoting projects in other parts of the city, the person said. If all developers offer discounts to promote sales, a price war may be triggered, he added.

The discounts on many projects have not changed even though it is the end of the first half, other industry insiders in the city told Yicai Global.

"Our firm is focused on debt restructuring, and has no plans to cut prices at present," an employee at a developer in southern China that is in a debt crisis told Yicai Global.

Besides not offer bigger price discount, some developers have less in their arsenal to offer now, "Our problem is that the company has not purchased land in the past two years, so it has no new projects to promote even if it wanted to do so," the person from the top real estate firm said.

Some 12.1 million square meters of newly built residential properties in 27 key cities are expected to come on the market in June, a jump of 9 percent from May, but a drop of 36 percent from the same period last year, according to a recent survey by real estate data cruncher CRIC.

Some 52 percent of this floor area is located in city centers, 30 percent in the suburbs and only 18 percent outside of the cities, where sales are particularly slow.

After a brief rebound earlier this year, the Chinese property market is back in the doldrums. The sales area of new builds in 100 key cities slumped 8 percent last month from April, and trading continues to be sluggish this month, according to data from China Index Academy.

This makes industry insiders pessimistic about June’s real estate data. Property transactions this month may be better than in May, but without strong policy support, growth will be limited, the CRIC said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor