(Bloomberg) — Two of China\u2019s private data agencies withheld monthly home sales figures at the government\u2019s behest, people familiar with the matter said, stoking transparency concerns in a critical sector of the world\u2019s second-largest economy.<\/p>\n
China Real Estate Information Corp. and China Index Academy, which are among the country\u2019s biggest private property data providers, didn\u2019t disclose the combined sales of the nation\u2019s 100 largest developers for November on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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The two agencies, which usually release the data on the last day of every month, were told by China\u2019s housing bureau to suspend making such figures publicly available until further notice, the people familiar said, asking not to be named discussing private information. Financial institutions that paid for the figures will still have access to them, provided they keep the data confidential, one of the people said.<\/p>\n
The housing ministry didn\u2019t immediately offer a comment when reached Monday.<\/p>\n
The delayed data disclosure came after China Vanke Co. \u2014 long considered one of the sector\u2019s healthier firms \u2014 sought to postpone repayment on a local bond for the first time last week. Vanke\u2019s surprise move added to the industry\u2019s woes after years of falling sales and massive defaults by China Evergrande Group, Country Garden Holdings Co., and others.<\/p>\n
The missing housing data \u201ccould increase uncertainty about the struggling sector\u2019s condition,\u201d Kristy Hung, a senior real estate analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a Monday note. \u201cThe November data would likely show steeper declines.\u201d<\/p>\n
The private data sets are important gauges of the new-home market as they are usually published two or three weeks before the official data. The government typically releases monthly new property sales in the third week of every month.<\/p>\n
In October, China Real Estate Information\u2019s reading suggested new home sales for the country\u2019s top 100 builders slumped 41.9% from a year earlier, the biggest monthly drop in 18 months, Bloomberg calculations show. November\u2019s figures will be closely scrutinized as they compare to a high base a year earlier following a stimulus blitz from the government.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Global banks remain pessimistic on China\u2019s property market, which has faced renewed sales weakness since the second quarter. UBS Group AG expects home prices to keep falling for at least two more years. Values of used homes have also dropped sharply, down more than a third from peak levels in major cities, according to UBS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Two of China\u2019s private data agencies withheld monthly home sales figures at the government\u2019s behest, people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[3662,51,1395,189687,189688,1700,125739,76238,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-605321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-bloomberg","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-china-evergrande-group","12":"tag-critical-sector","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-private-data","15":"tag-sales-figures","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115644534779649842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}