(Yicai Global) June 1 -- China’s real estate market rebounded in May thanks to looser policies although sales were still less than half what they were the same period last year. If the uptick continues in June, then it is proof that the market is indeed bouncing back, a Chinese real estate data cruncher said.

Property transactions at the country’s top 100 developers advanced 5.6 percent in May from April to CNY454.7 billion (USD68 billion), China Real Estate Information Corp. said yesterday. This is a big improvement on April’s 16 percent month-on-month slide, but is still a drop of 59.4 percent from the same period a year earlier.

June’s property sales will be an important indicator to verify whether the market really is recovering and will also show how the second half will unfold, CRIC said. Now that the Covid-19 outbreaks are under control and with developers trying to achieve good semi-annual performances, real estate companies will definitely increase their supply of properties on the market.

“Footfall in May rose about 18 percent from April,” a source at real estate developer CIFI Group told Yicai Global. As it can take two to three months to sell the properties after a customer expresses interest, sales in major cities are expected to rebound in the third quarter.

Overall sales in May were slightly better than in April, but the performance was uneven throughout the month, said a person working in the marketing department of a major developer.

“There were more customers but we will see if the popularity can continue during the Dragon Boat Festival long weekend in early June,” said a person working for a property developer in southern China.

“Sales this year had two watershed moments. The first was in mid-March, when the Covid-19 flare-ups started and sales started to sink. The other was after April 29 when supportive polices were brought in and sales started to rise,” the CIFI source said.

“The government has incentive policies in place, so restoring market confidence will be the next step,” he added.

This year, some 134 cities issued 223 policies to ease curbs on the property market as of May 24, according to CRIC. It has been the most intense period of bolstering the sector in recent years, and the number of new policies increased each month.

Sales at the country’s top 20 property developers climbed 15 percent in April from a month earlier, while that of those ranking 21st to 50th jumped more than 18 percent,and that of those ranking 51st to 100th soared over 30 percent, according to data from EH Consulting. But sales at the top 100 property firms plunged between 40 percent and 65 percent year on year.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor