China’s home sales surge during National Day holiday on stimulus push

From October 1, China began a one-year pilot interest subsidy for eligible first time homebuyers, with fiscal authorities covering 1 percentage point of the annual rate. It marks the central government’s first such subsidy on commercial housing loans, and it helped fuel a holiday surge in sales, with home viewings and transactions heating up.

One project in Beijing’s Daxing District sold out at its first launch on September 27th. After more units were released during the holiday, it drew more than 500 groups of visitors in just three days, with about 20 units subscribed. Buyers are showing more willingness to commit as first-tier cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou roll out fresh support for the market.

“During the National Day holiday, many clients came to view homes with their whole families, and they took less time to subscribe. Since the end of August, Shanghai has rolled out a series of demand side support policies. The trade in program directly widened the pool of homebuyers and lifted market confidence,” said Xu Tong, marketing director of property project in Minhang District, Shanghai.

Data from Chinese rental and sales services company Anjuke shows Shanghai logged 233 signed deals for new residential homes from October 1 to 4, up 14 percent year on year, on a total transaction area of just over 27,000 square meters. Industry insiders say the market heat reflects the sustained effect of the stimulus measures.

“We believe the package of favorable policies introduced during the National Day holiday has boosted activity in the housing market, with visits and purchase commitments rising for both new and second hand homes. Ahead of the holiday, cities including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, and Wuhan during the holiday itself, issued detailed local rules for the sales system reform, giving the market a clearer signal. The implication is that the number of new projects available for sale will not fall noticeably, and overall supply will stay ample,” said Li Yujia, chief researcher at Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center.

Experts note that holiday promotions, combined with policy support, delivered a double boost, with market confidence showing tentative signs of recovery.

A super El Nino event officially formed in September 2026, monitoring data from China’s National Climate Center showed on Friday.

Zhao Junhu, chief forecaster at the center, said that the equatorial central and eastern Pacific entered an El Nino state in May this year, with sea surface temperatures in the key monitoring region rising rapidly and continuously from May to September.

The three-month running mean of the sea surface temperature (SST) index in the monitoring region has remained above 0.5 degrees Celsius for five consecutive months. The index exceeded 2.5 degrees Celsius for the July-September period, meeting the threshold for a super El Nino event.

The event is classified as an eastern Pacific-type El Nino, in which the warmest sea surface temperatures are concentrated in the equatorial eastern Pacific.

Monitoring data showed that sea surface temperatures across most of the equatorial Pacific in September were above average of the same period, with temperatures in the warm pool of the eastern Pacific exceeding the climatological average by more than 3 degrees Celsius.

The SST index for the monitoring region reached 2.94 degrees Celsius in September, up 0.35 degrees Celsius from August. The average index for the July-September period stood at 2.54 degrees Celsius.

Based on a combination of domestic and international dynamical climate models and statistical forecasting methods, the center expects sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific to continue rising over the next three months, peaking in late autumn or early winter, Zhao said.

The event is expected to become the strongest El Nino on record since systematic monitoring began, he added.