Guangzhou real estate market welcomes a "small spring" with second-hand home online transactions surpassing 10,000 units in March

Guangzhou’s housing market is entering a “first-sping-season rally” (a traditional term for an early warm-up).

According to the latest disclosure by the Guangzhou Real Estate Intermediary Association, in March 2026, the number and area of second-home residential listings signed online in Guangzhou were 10,785 units and 1.0533 million square meters, respectively. Month over month, they rose by 141.38% and 129.52%, respectively. With single-month online signing volume surging past the 10,000-unit threshold in one leap and hitting the highest level in nearly one year, it has become a clear signal of a rebound in the market.

Second-quarter first quarter: over 24,000 units of online signing for second-hand homes

From January to March 2026, second-home residential properties in Guangzhou completed 24,209 online signings, with an online signing area of 2.4242 million square meters. The Guangzhou Real Estate Intermediary Association said that demand that had built up around the Spring Festival holidays was released in a concentrated way. Combined with favorable factors such as a surge in homebuying driven by education needs and premium-winning transactions in the land auction market, the market has shown a distinct “first-sping-season rally” trend.

All regions saw comprehensive growth in transactions. Looking at month-over-month changes in the number of signed units across Guangzhou’s districts, growth rates in all areas exceeded 100%. Among them, the increase in Zengcheng District reached 162.14%, while multiple other districts—including Liwan, Baiyun, and Panyu—also saw growth rates above 150%.

Tang Zhiyuan, Director of the Guangzhou Housing Policy Research Center, told reporters that after the Spring Festival, the online signing volumes for both second-hand and new homes in Guangzhou have grown for several consecutive weeks. Visits, property viewings, reservation volume, and contract conversion rates have all been improving week by week, indicating that the pace for buyers with urgent demand is accelerating.

Transaction mix highlights “urgent demand” and “urgent upgrade” as the drivers

Judging from the breakdown by transaction area ranges, demand in Guangzhou’s second-hand home market shows clear characteristics. Purchases driven by urgent demand and by improvement-oriented needs have become the market’s main force, with improvement-oriented demand releasing at a relatively fast pace.

Specifically, the shares of units transacted in the 60–90㎡, 90–120㎡, and 120–144㎡ segments increased by 2.29, 0.37, and 0.35 percentage points, respectively, month over month.

Among them, the 60–90㎡ segment accounts for 33.2% of transactions, up 2.29 percentage points month over month. It has remained in first place for three consecutive months and is still the core choice for urgent-demand buyers. The 90–120㎡ segment’s share is 30.72%, up 0.37 percentage points month over month. This highlights that the improvement-demand main force still tends to “buy a step-up directly” with mid-sized and large homes. Meanwhile, the transaction share of high-end products at 144㎡ and above fell to 8.78%.

The stable performance of the urgent-demand market has become an important underlying factor behind the rebound in Guangzhou’s housing market. Data monitoring by CRIC shows that in 2025, for Guangzhou commodity residential homes with a total price of 2 million to 3 million yuan, urgent-demand buyers made up the main成交 range, with a full-year cumulative 12,261 units sold, and an average transaction price per unit of 2.46 million yuan. Buyers with a total budget of 2 million to 3 million yuan accounted for 19% of transactions in January to February 2026, matching the share for that total-price band across the whole of last year.

First-tier cities: rising warmth in market sentiment

Market changes are first reflected in the firsthand experience of agents in first-tier housing markets. “Since March, second-hand homes’ viewing volume has shown a clear increase compared with February, and transaction volume has also risen significantly. It just so happens that March is a peak season for school-district property transactions. Many parents are accelerating their homebuying steps around the enrollment points, and the pace of transactions for homes with quality school places has clearly quickened,” Li Tiancheng, a person in charge of the Panyu segment at a major platform, told reporters.

Data from the Shell platform also confirms the activity level in first-tier markets. Since March, the number of people viewing second-hand homes in Guangzhou every week has remained above 20,000 viewings. However, at present, the transaction cycle for most listings is still in the 200- to 300-day range. In March, Guangzhou’s average transaction price for second-hand homes was 20,900 yuan per square meter, and the number of new listings added that month was 17,289 units.

“Now, sellers’ asking prices are relatively firm; there won’t be large price cuts. After earlier adjustments, many second-hand homes already offer good value for money,” Li Tiancheng said. “Taking advantage of the housing market’s ‘first-sping-season rally,’ we are also actively facilitating deals between home seekers and homeowners. Based on past experience, after the dense transaction period in March and April, Guangzhou’s housing market may enter a phase of seasonal lull in property transactions.”

Second-hand home rebound is stronger than new home performance

This rebound in Guangzhou’s housing market shows a distinct feature: second-hand homes perform significantly better than new homes. Li Yujia, Chief Researcher at the Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center, told reporters that in March, second-hand home transactions in Guangzhou exceeded 10,000 units, while new home sales were about 6,000 units. Second-hand transaction volume was about twice that of new homes. Moreover, the market is clearly dominated by urgent demand and urgent-upgrade buyers.

The share of transactions for larger units in the second-hand market has increased somewhat. Li Yujia believes this indicates that demand to “sell the old and buy the new” has started to recover, which has a positive effect on promoting the transaction cycle of the real estate market.

He analyzed that in April, as earlier transactions of second-hand homes with low total prices have been sufficiently released, after some homeowners sell their second-hand homes, they will most likely move into the new home market, or choose to purchase second-hand homes with larger size and higher quality. Active trading in second-hand homes is expected to further drive demand in both the new home market and the improvement-oriented second-hand market. At the same time, with signs that trading is active and prices are stabilizing, this will be important in helping stabilize market expectations and form a market consensus that the transaction cycle of “selling the old and buying the new” and “buying bigger for more value” can reinforce price stabilization through increased transaction activity.

Regarding the outlook for Guangzhou’s housing market in the second half of the year, Li Yujia believes that the market is still in a stage of price-searching. It will take a process to move from price-searching to a bottoming-out. Several factors are at play: first, the monthly supply of second-hand listings is still higher than transaction volume, so market supply remains relatively abundant; second, the phenomenon of sellers listing with price cuts is still fairly common, and there has not yet been consensus that prices have fully stabilized; third, in the new home market, homogeneous competition problems stand out across various sub-areas. Even though the current situation has a large supply, it has not been clearly alleviated. In particular, the pace of destocking for high-quality projects has slowed somewhat, and some projects in the near suburbs and far suburbs are still primarily promoting sales.

Li Yujia said that the key for the second-half outlook lies in whether the second-hand market can sustain its activity, thereby effectively boosting the transaction cycle of “selling the old and buying the new” and “buying bigger for more value,” and making it a shared market understanding that increased activity will help stabilize prices. At the same time, different administrative districts and sub-areas need to adjust new home pre-sales and construction schedules reasonably based on how homes are being absorbed, to ease the problem of excess homogeneous supply, avoid malicious competition and price wars among developers, and promote stable and healthy development of the real estate market.

(Editor: Wen Jing)

Keywords:

                                                            Real estate market
                                                            Guangzhou housing market