“First-tier cities show resilience, third- and fourth-tier cities have basically bottomed out, and the real estate market remained relatively stable during the Spring Festival.”
Recently, multiple institutions have released analysis reports on the Spring Festival real estate market, with “stability” emerging as the keyword throughout the holiday. According to data from CRIC, real estate developers launched projects steadily during the Spring Festival, with most cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hefei focusing on continued sales, and transactions showing a trend of stabilizing and rebounding. According to data from the China Index Academy, the average daily new home transaction area in 28 representative cities during the Spring Festival holiday (January 28th – February 4th) increased by 8% compared to the previous year’s holiday (February 10th – February 17th), indicating a relatively stable market.
Li Yifeng, Deputy Director of Research at the China Index Academy, told reporters, “The market was relatively stable during the Spring Festival this year, but it is still in the off-season. It is expected that new home and second-hand home transactions in key cities will see a significant rebound after the holiday.”
First-tier city transactions doubled by 134%, with notable increases in many cities
During the Spring Festival in 2025, which coincided with the most lenient policy environment for the real estate market in recent years, local governments actively introduced preferential policies targeting home buyers returning to their hometowns, stimulating their demand for purchasing homes. At the same time, many real estate developers seized the marketing opportunity, launching various promotional activities before the holiday, with many projects remaining open during the holiday to promote sales. The marketing efforts of real estate developers mostly continued at previous levels.
Data from CRIC showed that during the Spring Festival, transactions in first-tier cities increased by 134% year-on-year, mainly due to the low base effect from the previous year’s Spring Festival holiday. Second-tier cities saw mixed performance, with significant increases in Hangzhou and Suzhou, while Wuhan, Jinan, and Qingdao experienced substantial declines. The decline in third- and fourth-tier cities narrowed to 10%. In particular, individual cities such as Wenzhou, Jiangmen, and Dongguan saw year-on-year doubles, with growth rates significantly exceeding the average.
Reporters found that the Spring Festival real estate market in many cities showed considerable activity. For example, Guangzhou and Chongqing saw notable increases. Subscription indicators in Guangzhou continued to improve, with a subscription area of 32,800 square meters during the Spring Festival in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 71%, with market activity concentrated in the city center. Chongqing accelerated sales through price cuts, reaching a four-year peak in subscription area.
Although no new projects were launched in Shanghai during the Spring Festival, some hot projects still performed well. For example, the Zhangjiang Jinmao Mansion project received over a hundred visits during the holiday. In addition, multiple projects under China Merchants Shekou held warm-up events during the Spring Festival and achieved certain transactions, mainly from repeat customer conversions.
In Li Yifeng’s view, as the Spring Festival holiday ends, residents’ work and home purchasing activities gradually return to normal, and it is expected that the market’s online signing volume will rebound to some extent after the holiday.
In the second-hand home market, statistics from the 58 Anjuke Research Institute showed that the home search popularity in 100 cities during the Spring Festival in 2025 was 60.3, a year-on-year decrease of 21% compared to the previous Spring Festival. Observing the post-holiday recovery speed of home search popularity in various tier cities this year, it can be seen that most cities have basically returned to pre-holiday levels.
