The majority of property developers in China reported continuous but slowing profit growth in the first half of 2019. Industry experts said that this means that a stable development trend is emerging in the nation’s real estate market. The net profit of leading real estate company Country Garden increased 41% in the first six months to CNY23.06 billion, compared with the same period of last year, but the growth rate last year was more than 90%. Another leading developer, China Vanke, saw its net profit grow 29.8% in the first half of this year. In the same period, it acquired 54 new projects with a total planned gross floor area of 13.728 million square meters, down by 33%.

About 30 developers so far declared negative growth, including China Evergrande Group, whose net profit is expected to plummet about 49% to approximately CNY27 billion from that of the same period last year, due to the decrease in the floor area of properties delivered in the first half of the year. The company recently also started a sales campaign to stimulate sales, providing a discount of 22% in more than 500 of its property projects nationwide. Last year its discount was limited to 11%.

September and October is a traditionally busy time for property developers. Zhang Dawei, Chief Analyst at Centaline Property Agency, pointed out that the real estate market is still mostly on the rise in terms of profit and scale, but its growth rate is slowing down due to tightening regulatory policies to curb an overheating market and rising financial pressure.

From the beginning of 2019, financing channels for developers have become limited to prevent too much capital flows into the property market. Yan Yuejin, Director of the Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institute, added that property developers are proactively paying off their debts and controlling risks, instead of pursuing aggressive expansion. He predicted that the market would continue its steady development in the second half of the year. Sunac China Holdings, one of China’s five major property developers, expected tightening regulation to cause a gradual drop in land prices from the current relatively high level back to a reasonable one. “People will not be hurried to buy a house,” Sunac Chairman Sun Hongbin said. Sunac reported net profit of CNY10.29 billion for the first half of 2019, up 61.7% compared with the same period one year earlier. Revenue increased 64.9% to CNY76.84 billion year-on-year, the China Daily reports.

Chinese investors are now pumping more money in the French real estate market. More than 14% of properties sold in Paris to non-resident and resident foreigners during the first three months of the year were bought by buyers from China, pushing out Italians as the biggest group of foreign buyers of homes in the French capital. In terms of numbers, British investors are traditionally the most active non-resident foreign buyers in France, but their focus is outside the capital. The 13th arrondissement in Paris has the largest Chinese population in the city.