Buyers from Macao and Hong Kong spent around 2.99 billion yuan (US$410 million) on homes in Guangdong province over the past year, according to a Chinese state media report published yesterday, which cited data from the People’s Bank of China.
The report noted that Guangdong’s financial institutions helped Macao and Hong Kong buyers process 2,603 payments for houses in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) between 26 February 2024 and the end of January 2025.
Last February saw mainland authorities implementing new regulations that further facilitated the purchase of homes in Guangdong by SAR residents, including the smoother remittance of funds into a mainland bank account that is used for the payment of the home.
Seniors are prominently represented among those seeking to become homeowners, with the bank mentioning that an increasing number of elderly Macao and Hong Kong residents are preferring the mainland for its lower living costs.
[See more: Everything you need to know about buying property in Macao]
With the slowdown in China’s economy in recent years, the GBA residential property sector remained “cautious” during the first six months of 2024, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, in spite of the central government’s implementation of various deregulatory and stimulus measures.
Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics shows that the country’s property market is still struggling, with first-tier cities reporting a year-on-year drop of 3.4 percent in the prices of new residential buildings this January. Guangzhou and Shenzhen recorded falls of 8.4 percent and 5.2 percent respectively.
The price of secondhand homes in first-tier cities also fell in January, plummeting by 5.6 percent, with Guangzhou and Shenzhen down by 10 percent and 6.1 percent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, so-called “second-tier” cities registered a decrease of 5 percent in their prices of new residential homes when compared to January 2023.
