China’s Struggling Real Estate Market Moves Closer to Stabilizing

UBS analysts on Wednesday became the latest to raise expectations that China’s struggling real estate market is close to stabilizing, CNBC reported (3-20-25).

“After four or five years of a downward cycle, we have begun to see some relatively positive signals,” John Lam, head of Asia-Pacific property and Greater China property research at UBS Investment Bank, told reporters. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

“Of course, these signals aren’t nationwide, and may be local,” Lam said. “But compared to the past, it should be more positive.”

One indicator is improving sales in China’s largest cities. Existing-home sales in five major Chinese cities have climbed by more than 30% from a year ago on a weekly basis as of Wednesday, according to CNBC analysis of data accessed via Wind Information. The category is typically called “secondary home sales” in China, in contrast to the primary market, which has typically consisted of newly built apartment homes.

UBS now predicts China’s home prices can stabilize in early 2026, earlier than the mid-2026 timeframe previously forecast. They expect secondary transactions could reach half of the total by 2026.

UBS looked at four factors—low inventory, a rising premium on land prices, rising secondary sales, and increasing rental prices—that had indicated a property market inflection point between 2014 and 2015. As of February, only rental prices had yet to see an improvement, the firm said.