On April 16th, the Ministry of Finance issued the "Notice on Issuing the Special Fund Budget for Urban Affordable Housing Project of the Central Government in 2019", and the number of planned renovation sets of urban shanty towns in 2019 was also released.
Compared with 2018, the number of shed renovation sets in 37 provinces and cities in 2019 totaled 2,852,900 sets, which was nearly 51% lower than the planned renovation set of 5.88 million sets in 2018.
Before the Ministry of Finance announced the start-up of the shed reform plan in 2019 in April, in January 2019, local governments disclosed the relevant data of the shed reform plan in 2019 in their work reports, and the targets of nearly half of the cities were lower than those in early 2019.
Analysts pointed out that the sharp reduction of the start-up target of shed reform in 2019 indicates that the proportion of commercial housing sales brought by shed reform in the total sales of commercial housing in the country will gradually decrease, and the direct impact is reflected in the benefits of shed reform in third-and fourth-tier cities and below. It will gradually weaken.
According to the report of Kerui Real Estate Research Center, except for a few provinces such as Fujian, Tianjin, Guangxi, Guangdong and Tibet, the planned construction volume of the remaining 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities has declined to varying degrees compared with 2018, with a decline of more than 50% reaching 15.
In terms of absolute value, the planned construction starts of Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces in 2019 still exceeded 200,000 sets, ranking among the top three in many provinces and cities, while the construction starts of seven provinces and cities such as Ningbo, Ningxia and Hainan were all less than 10,000 sets due to the small scale of shed reform. Judging from the year-on-year changes, there are ups and downs among provinces and cities, and the overall situation is "falling more and rising less". Five provinces, including Fujian, Tianjin, Guangxi, Guangdong and Tibet, grew year-on-year, with Fujian’s increase being the most significant, reaching 117%. The planned starts of the remaining 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have declined to varying degrees compared with 2018, with 15 of them falling by more than 50%. It is noteworthy that Shandong, Henan, Guizhou, Hunan and other major shed-reformed provinces all experienced a year-on-year decline of over 70%. We believe that the staged callback in the provinces with a large amount of shed reform in the early stage conforms to objective laws and market expectations. For example, in Henan Province, the actual amount of shed reform in 2018 has reached 1.8 times that in 2016, and the planned target for 2019 is only 150,000 sets, down 77% year-on-year, with a significant decline, and the decline is also expected.
In fact, before the Ministry of Finance announced the start-up amount of shed reform plans in 2019 in various provinces in April, in January 2019, local governments disclosed the relevant data of shed reform plans in 2019 in their work reports. Through the comparison of these two sets of data, we can also see the changes in the current market expectations for shed reform.
Among the 19 provinces that can be counted, 7 provinces including Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Henan and Tibet have not changed much in 2019, and the increase or decrease is within 5%. Nearly half of the cities’ targets have fallen to different degrees compared with the beginning of 2019, and the declines in Liaoning, Jilin, Hubei, Shaanxi and other provinces have significantly exceeded 50%. On the one hand, the data disclosed by some provinces at the beginning of the year are more general, which is basically the target construction volume of two years; On the other hand, Hubei, Shaanxi and other provinces have basically overdrawn the future shed reform space due to the large amount of work started in the previous shed reform. It can be expected that the promotion of shed reform to local real estate sales is also weakening. In addition, the amount of construction started in a few provinces such as Fujian and Sichuan is higher than the data released at the beginning of the year, which is also in line with the regulation idea of "governing by the city", and the goal of shed reform also reflects the characteristics of looseness and tightness.
Chen Sheng, executive director of China Real Estate Data Research Institute, said that according to the previously announced three-year plan, the proportion of shantytown renovation is gradually decreasing.
According to the previously published three-year plan, another 15 million sets of shanty towns will be renovated in the three years from 2018 to 2020, which is the second three-year plan for shantytown renovation. Prior to this, in 2015, the State Council proposed to renovate 18 million housing units in shanty towns, including dangerous buildings and villages in cities, in 2015-2017.
Kerui Real Estate Research Center pointed out that from 2015 to 2017, it basically maintained a year-on-year growth trend. In the past three years, the number of starts was above 6 million sets. Although the target for 2018 was slightly reduced to 5.8 million sets, from the actual completion situation, the number of new shanty towns was 6.27 million sets, and the target completion rate reached a new high of 107.4%.
The overfulfilment in previous years also laid the groundwork for the subsequent shed reform and shrinkage.
Last October, the executive meeting of the State Council clearly put forward that the scope and standards of shed reform should be strictly improved, and the monetary resettlement policy of shed reform should be adjusted and improved according to local conditions. Among them, it is clearly proposed to adjust and improve the monetary resettlement policy for shed reform, and cities and counties with insufficient commercial housing inventory and high pressure of rising house prices should cancel the preferential monetary resettlement policy as soon as possible.
The report of Kerui Real Estate Research Center points out that the less shantytown renovation is, the more it conforms to the objective law, and it is impossible to change more and more. On the other hand, some negative effects of vigorously promoting the monetary resettlement of shed reform have already appeared, such as increasing the pressure of local financial liabilities and pushing up the housing prices in the third and fourth lines. The inventory problem based on the third and fourth lines has been initially solved, and it is also reasonable to lower the target of shed reform.
The insiders believe that the main purpose of shed reform is to meet the housing needs of residents who just need it. With the reduction of the overall number of shanty towns and the end of the task of destocking in various places, some cities and counties with low inventory will gradually withdraw from the monetization of shed reform.
Kerui Real Estate Research Center believes that the tightening of shed reform policy in 2019 is basically expected, especially in the context of relatively tight local finance, monetized resettlement and other methods will gradually withdraw, and the stimulating effect on real estate sales will also be weakened.
In addition, the report pointed out that the current scale of shed reform is "halved", first of all, it is an impact on the market expectation level, and it is also releasing a signal that the phased destocking task has been completed, and the promotion of shed reform to real estate sales is disappearing. Previously, the shed reform once directly boosted the sales of about 20% of commercial housing, and this force will never return in 2019 and beyond.
In addition, the monetization resettlement has also been continuously tightened. As early as October 2018, it was stated at the symposium of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development that the monetization resettlement of shed reform in 2019 will be mainly based on special bonds, and the government’s purchase of shed reform service mode will be cancelled; At the same time, local governments have also proposed that the shed reform will focus on physical resettlement, and the proportion of monetized resettlement will also be reduced, which will have a more direct impact on the sales of commercial housing. Without the drive of funds, the purchasing power of residents will be greatly reduced.
Zhang Bo, chief analyst of 58 Anjuke Real Estate Research Institute, pointed out that the sharp reduction of the starting target of shed reform in 2019 indicates that the proportion of commercial housing sales brought by shed reform in the total sales of commercial housing in the country will gradually decrease, and the direct impact is reflected in the shed reform in the third-and fourth-tier cities and below will also gradually weaken.
In Zhang Bo’s view, the direct benefits of shed reform will be accelerated and weakened in the third-and fourth-tier cities in the future, and the third-and fourth-tier cities will usher in obvious differentiation. In the future, the cities in key urban agglomerations will have more population concentration, and the shrinking third-and fourth-tier cities will face further shrinkage of the commercial housing market.
