China's housing market recovery fails to boost mortgage demand amid more full-payment purchases and early repayments

Source: Mysteel May 26, 2026 11:45

Since April, the housing market recovery in China's core cities has continued to gather momentum. At the April Politburo meeting, policymakers stressed the need to strive to stabilize the real estate market and steadily advance urban renewal. Industry data shows that second-hand home transactions in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai continued to post year-on-year growth in April, while price declines across the country's top 10 cities narrowed from March levels.

However, the social financing and credit data released by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) showed that household loans declined by Yuan 786.9 billion ($116 billion) in April, an additional decrease of Yuan 265.3 billion compared with a year earlier. Among them, short-term loans fell by Yuan 446.2 billion,