China’s Top Three Cities Roll Out Housing Sales Reform
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have each issued detailed implementation rules for China’s reform of commodity housing sales, completing a rollout that shifts the world’s second-largest property market away from its decades-old pre-sales model. Guangzhou became the third first-tier city to act, publishing its measures on 30 September, following Beijing on 24 September and Shanghai on 28 September, according to The Paper.
The three plans translate a national framework issued on 28 August by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Financial Regulatory Administration into local practice, raising the pre-sale threshold to “main structure topped out” and steadily promoting completed-home sales.
The National Framework
The 28 August Notice on Improving the Commodity Housing Sales System set the direction for the overhaul. Beyond the higher pre-sale bar, it called for sales of completed homes on a “what you see is what you get” basis to reduce delivery disputes and fundamentally prevent delivery risk. The same day, the central bank and financial regulator issued 36 measures on real estate credit, extending the maximum individual housing loan term from 30 to 40 years, while the securities regulator published 12 measures on capital-market support, as the 21st Century Business Herald reported.
The reform targets a system introduced in 1994, when developers sold homes before completion and used buyer funds to finance rolling construction. According to Lianhe Zaobao, the pre-sales model fueled over-supply and deepened the high-debt, high-leverage, high-turnover problems widely seen as the root cause of stalled “unfinished building” projects after developers’ capital chains broke.
Where the Three Cities Converge
In key respects, the three cities moved in lockstep. For commodity housing projects whose state land-use-right grant announcements were published after 28 August 2026, pre-sales now require the single building’s main structure to be topped out. Projects already in the pipeline receive categorized transition treatment. For projects obtaining pre-sale permits on or after that date, individual mortgages, including provident-fund loans, may be disbursed only after completion and filing, with funds paid into a regulated escrow account.
The three cities also adopted a lead-bank system under which a single lending bank is responsible for a project’s entire financing chain, with all related funds managed in one account. On land payments, they aligned on a 50% down payment within 30 calendar days and interest-free installments for the balance.
Where They Diverge
The differences lie in the details. On proof that a structure is topped out, Beijing is strictest, requiring a main-structure acceptance record signed and sealed by the construction, survey, design, construction and supervision units, CNR reported when Beijing issued its opinion. Shanghai and Guangzhou require the topped-out structure but do not further specify the documentary proof.
Deposit caps for completed-home sales also vary. Beijing generally limits deposits to no more than 1% of the total housing price, Shanghai to 3%, and Guangzhou to 5% - the highest of the three. Fund-regulation institutions differ as well: Beijing uses its housing fund management center, Shanghai its real estate transaction centers, and Guangzhou its housing transaction supervision center.
Land-payment timelines are another point of contrast. Beijing allows the balance to be paid within two years, while Shanghai and Guangzhou use a one-plus-one model, with the balance due within one year and a possible extension of up to another year.
Guangzhou went furthest in development coordination, adding a section on policy synergy that supports phased permits, pre-registration of real estate, and a pilot for unitized mortgages on state-owned construction land-use rights. Analysts at Puru Real Estate Research said these arrangements aim to offset the financing and schedule costs imposed by the new “topped-out pre-sales, disbursement after filing, and fund regulation until first registration” regime.
Reading the Divergence
Chen Wenjing, policy research director at the China Index Academy, said Guangzhou was highly aligned with Beijing and Shanghai on critical links such as the pre-sale threshold, in-transit transition, fund regulation, mortgage disbursement timing and the lead-bank system, while showing clear local differentiation on deposit caps, conditions for releasing fund regulation, and land-supply and support policies.
Puru Real Estate Research summarized the orientations: “Beijing is strict on funds and detailed on standards; Shanghai is lenient on transition with parameters supplemented later; Guangzhou concentrates the widest deposit cap, the most detailed fund regulation, and the strongest development coordination in a single document.”
What It Means for the Market
For years, the industry ran on high turnover, early pre-sales, early payback and rolling development. With the local rules in place, analysts expect that logic of development, financing, sales and delivery to be reworked.
For developers, Beijing published its first post-policy commodity residential land auction on 30 September, embedding the national notice and its own implementation rules in the transaction documents. Pan Pan, chief consulting expert at Beijing Centaline Property, said installment land payments are an important adjustment tool that eases developers’ initial funding pressure and lowers the barrier to bidding.
The Tongce Research Institute argued that pre-sale and completed-home sales are arrangements suited to different market stages and that the current stock-market era makes completed-home sales an institutional guarantee of quality housing. It noted that under the pre-sale model, buyers must keep repaying loans even when a project stalls, a problem completed-home sales can avoid.
Li Yujia, chief researcher at the Housing Policy Research Center of the Guangdong Urban-Rural Planning Institute, said the national completed-home sales share rose from 10.2% in 2020 to 32.4% in 2025, and that promoting the model could give the market one to two years of breathing room to repair supply and demand through a gap in new supply.
What to Watch Next
Wuhan issued its own implementation opinions on 1 October, and industry players expect more cities to accelerate follow-up, using the three first-tier rules as a template. The near-term test will be whether the financing and approval tools embedded in the plans are enough to keep new supply flowing while the sales regime is rebuilt - and whether the lead-bank system delivers the tighter fund oversight its architects intend.