The “sleeping towns around Beijing” that people fought over back then—still no one wants them even with an 85% price cut: who killed suburban housing?

To be honest, this round of downturn in China’s suburban housing is still beyond my expectations.
In May this year, at the gate of a Yanjiao Chaobai Renjia residential community, the intermediary’s red-sale sign showed a price for a 102 sq m, north-south oriented three-bedroom apartment with fine renovation and ready to move in: listed at 598k yuan, or 5,862 yuan per sq m. But nine years ago, buying the same unit type cost 4.18 million yuan. This isn’t a joke—it’s everyday life in 2026 Yanjiao. (In 2026, the average secondary home listing price in Yanjiao has been hovering around 8,000 yuan/sq m. Prices in communities such as Fucheng Shangshangcheng and Shui Ze Hua Cheng have fallen from a peak of 40k yuan/sq m to under 10k yuan/sq m, a drop of more than 75%.)
And the real “downturn king” isn’t Yanjiao. Yongqing—once hyped as the “gateway to the south of Beijing”—saw its home prices surge from just a few thousand yuan to 23k yuan/sq m in 2017, driven by three big concepts: the Beijing Daxing International Airport, the R1 subway line, and the integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. What is it now? 3,500 yuan/sq m. (For a 100 sq m unit, the total price back then was 2.3 million; now its market value is only 350k. Let alone a down payment being wiped out— the total home price itself isn’t enough to cover a bank loan. The number of auctioned-for-legal-enforcement properties in the region has been soaring year after year.)
If time goes back to 2017, when Yanjiao Seoul Sweet City launched, the unit price was sold as high as 40k. It was nearly sold out that same day. Intermediary shops all over the streets were packed with people, and investment buyers paid in full to buy apartments as if they were buying vegetables. Back then, everyone told the same story: “Get to Guomao in half an hour,” “The subway will be opening soon,” and “Yanjiao is Beijing’s backyard.”
It’s not just the Beijing-ring area. Outside Shanghai’s outer ring, in 2024, excluding Pudong, eight suburban areas together brought 186 projects and 34,968 home units to market, accounting for 58.44% of the city. What happened, though? Only 6 triggered points; the other 180 new developments all entered a long, enduring “resale promotion war.” (Hongqiao Dahongqiao and Lingang can’t sell anymore. New homes in far-suburb towns have stalled across the board. For some projects, even after six months the sell-through rate is under 5%. At Jiading Huating, Chunshen Sunshine’s initial sales in three years have only achieved one-third of the intended pace.)
And this year in May, secondary home prices in first-tier cities actually rose against the trend—Shanghai and Shenzhen were up 0.6% respectively. Same piece of land, two completely different worlds. In the core areas, people have started competing to buy. In the suburbs, no one even bothers to take a look. $SOL
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