"Making 500k in one night, what else is there to talk about?" The Shanghai second-hand housing market is now seeing sellers drastically raising prices, and buyers are no longer willing to accept it.

Is AI Asking? Are Pricing Increase Strategies Backfiring as the Market Rebounds?

Yu, a programmer in Zhangjiang, had been watching a home in the residential community where he rents in the Jinqiao area for almost a year, with a total price of over 7 million yuan. He had planned to go see the property during the Qingming holiday, but when he opened the app, it jumped directly by 5 million yuan. “How can this be negotiated?” he said.

This is not a one-off case. After Shanghai’s “new seven rules” for the real estate market were rolled out, in March the transaction volume for secondhand homes hit a 5-year high. Many buyers were eager to jump in. During the Qingming holiday, the spring scenery was just right—prime time for property viewings. But some buyers found that the homes they liked either suddenly increased in price or simply couldn’t be negotiated at all.

Ms. Xia looked at an older apartment in the suburbs under 100 square meters. The night before, the two sides had just talked it down to 8B yuan, but the next day the seller suddenly raised the price to 8B yuan. She was both crying and laughing: “I thought that with the current market, most landlords would lower prices to sell. Now they’re raising prices—are they ‘covering’ to help the neighbors offload their inventory?” Later, she switched targets and ended up taking a house built in 1995 with a construction area of 93 square meters,成交 price of 500k yuan.

Little Xu is a “Shanghainese commuter” who graduated just three years ago. Before the Spring Festival, she had set her sights on a “old, rundown, small” property in Putuo District. She planned to use the holiday to negotiate, but before she even opened her mouth, the seller raised the price by 1.5 million yuan. Unable to do anything about it, she posted online for help: “We’re off by 1.5 million yuan from the landlord’s expectations—what negotiation tactics are there?”

Help posts on social media.

The data also confirms a shift in sellers’ mindset. In March, the average listing price for existing homes in Shanghai increased slightly by 0.08% month over month, ending a streak of 33 consecutive months of declines.

Many sellers are reigniting expectations of price increases. An intermediary reported that since March, in multiple areas of Shanghai there have been cases of sellers charging more and keeping inventory scarce. Prices agreed on in the early stage were temporarily reneged on—several popular residential compounds raised prices directly by 1 million to 5 million yuan, and some even paused listings and waited to see how the market would move.

Sellers’ mindset is understandable, but industry insiders generally believe that raising prices now is not necessarily the best solution.

Lu Wenxi, an analyst with Shanghai Zhongyuan Real Estate, pointed out that the rebound in transaction volume this round is due to concentrated release of pent-up demand under the support of new policies, not the start of a comprehensive price-increase cycle. Among the existing homes that closed in March, more than 70% had total prices below 3 million yuan. From the demand side, the main force in the market is owner-occupiers with limited budgets who are extremely sensitive to price.

From the supply side, the overall listing volume in Shanghai’s housing market is still within a reasonable range—not a situation where homes are hard to find. “The current market is hot in transactions, not in prices. Prices have only just stopped falling and stabilized; a big jump in price would directly scare off owner-occupier demand buyers and cause listings to lose competitiveness,” Lu Wenxi said.

For example, in Pudong, for a two-bedroom, one-living-room unit, after both sides agreed on 150k yuan, the seller temporarily added 150k yuan. The buyer immediately gave up and turned around to buy another unit with the same layout in the same residential compound. The seller waited a month for the next buyer, and it finally sold for 8B yuan. That not only meant earning 100k yuan less than originally planned, but also meant paying one additional month of holding costs.

“Seize the window, and clinch the deal decisively is best,” Lu Wenxi advised. For sellers, the optimal strategy is to price in line with recent成交 prices—don’t raise prices blindly, and don’t renege temporarily. If you run into a sincere buyer, close the deal decisively and secure the outcome. For sellers who are replacing their homes, they should be even more mindful of the pace: sell the old and buy the new quickly, realize asset monetization by leveraging the more active phase of the market, and don’t miss the opportunity just to wait for prices to rise.

Whether prices rise or not is up to the sellers; whether buyers buy or not is decided by the buyers’ actions. Those sellers with genuine intent are seeing faster transaction timelines.

Reporters learned that in the Huamu area of Pudong, for a 94-square-meter listing, the seller was sincere and adjusted the price three times over six months, dropping it from 500k yuan to 5.8M yuan. During just the Qingming holiday, it was scheduled for 9 viewings. In the Changzheng area of Putuo, for a 131-square-meter listing, the seller adjusted the price 4 times over six months, dropping it from 80k yuan to 80k yuan. During just the Qingming holiday, it was scheduled for 13 viewings.