China's Real Estate Reform 2026
30 September 2026 China has quietly ended the business model that built its property boom. On 28 August 2026, five national agencies released a coordinated package that moves new housing from "sell first, build later" to "build first, sell later." For two decades, developers bought land, sold flats off-plan, and used buyers' money to fund construction and the next land purchase. That cycle drove growth, and it also produced the unfinished-project crisis of recent years. What the 8·28 package takes away is the quick return on presales, the early cash that let developers snowball one project into the next. CITIC Securities describes it as a systematic rebuild of the presale system and high-leverage financing model that ran for more than 20 years. A NetEase analysis makes a similar point: higher presale thresholds, completed-home sales, longer loans and ring-fenced project cash leave little room for the high-debt, high-turnover model. The headlines focus on buyer...
