Host says | Shanghai landlords' prices jumped by 500k overnight, a programmer has been watching a house for a year: how can we still negotiate?
Transaction volume hits a 5-year high, are sellers starting to get confident?

After Shanghai’s “New Seven Rules” for the real estate market were rolled out, the transaction volume of second-hand homes in March hit a five-year high. During the Qingming holiday, many buyers were eager to give it a try, but ended up dumbfounded: the homes they wanted either suddenly went up in price, or they couldn’t even negotiate.

Zhangjiang programmer Xiao Yu had been eyeing a home worth over 7 million for almost a year. During the holiday, when he opened the app, it jumped straight up by 500,000. Ms. Xia had negotiated with her husband for a 2 million old apartment, but the very next day, the seller raised the price to 2.05 million. Xiao Xu was interested in a “small, run-down, old” property—he hadn’t even gotten a word out, but the seller first raised it by 150,000. The data also backed it up: in March, the average listed price rose slightly by 0.08% month-on-month, ending 33 months of consecutive declines.

But expert Lu Wenxi reminded that this round of warming is the release of pent-up demand, not a comprehensive price increase. One seller temporarily added an extra 80,000, but the buyer turned around and bought a unit of the same type—resulting in the seller actually selling 80,000 less in the end. Whether prices go up or not is decided by the seller; but whether buyers buy or not, they will “vote with their feet.” (Poster News, compiled from Shangguan News, edited by Feng Hao Huang Xiaorong Zhang Guang)