China's real estate market grows slowly in H1

China's real estate industry grew at a notably slower pace in the first half of this year with top players extending their leadership and market share as competition intensified, the latest industry report has found.

Between January and June, property sales by the top 100 developers totaled 3.9 trillion yuan (US$566 billion), a year-on-year increase of 4 percent. That compares with the 32 percent growth registered in the first half of 2018, according to CRIC, a subsidiary of E-House China and a leading real estate data application service provider in China.

"With pressure continuing, very moderate growth was achieved in property sales during the six-month period and we expect this rather weak momentum to extend through the end of this year despite a major rebound likely in the fourth quarter," said Martin Ding, chief executive officer of E-House (China) Enterprise Holdings Ltd. "In general, larger developers, particularly listed companies, outperformed others as more than half of the top 100 players recorded year-on-year sales growth of over 20 percent."

The country's top real estate developers continued to increase their market share. For instance, in terms of half-year sales by value, the top 3 developers jointly contributed 10.5 percent of the country's total, up 0.8 percentage point from the same period a year ago.

And the number of real estate developers who have accomplished sales of 100 billion yuan and above, or the so-called 100-billion-yuan club members, totaled 12 in the first half of 2019. That will likely grow to around 35 by the end of this year, according to CRIC forecast.