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 seeing a “small spring” rally. According to the latest disclosure from the Guangzhou Real Estate Intermediaries Association, in March 2026, the number and area of second-hand residential housing contract signings in Guangzhou were 10,785 units and 1.0533 million square meters, respectively—up 141.38% and 129.52% month over month. With the monthly contract signing volume breaking through the 10,000-unit threshold in one fell swoop and reaching the highest level in nearly a year, it has become a clear signal of a market rebound.

Second-quarter contract signings for existing homes exceed 24,000 units

From January to March 2026, second-hand residential housing in Guangzhou saw 24,209 contract signings, with a signed area of 2.4242 million square meters. The Guangzhou Real Estate Intermediaries Association said the demand that had been held back around the Spring Festival holiday has been released in a concentrated manner. Combined with favorable factors such as a surge in homebuying driven by education-related needs and premium-winning outcomes in the land auction market for high-quality parcels, the combined effect has driven the market to show a distinct “small spring” trend.

Regional transactions deliver broad-based growth. Looking at the month-over-month change in the number of contract signings across Guangzhou’s districts, growth in all areas exceeds one hundred percent. Among them, Zengcheng District’s increase reached 162.14%; meanwhile, multiple areas including Liwan District, Baiyun District, and Panyu District also saw increases of 150% or higher.

Tang Zhiyuan, Director of the Guangzhou Housing Policy Research Center, told reporters that after the Spring Festival, the contract signing volumes for both second-hand and new homes in Guangzhou have been increasing for several consecutive weeks. Visitor counts, property showings, purchase intention/booking volume, and the contract-conversion rate have all shown a week-over-week upward trend, and the pace for people with urgent homebuying needs to enter the market is accelerating.

Transaction mix highlights urgent-need and upgrade demand as the main driver

Judging from the composition of contract signing area bands, the second-hand housing market in Guangzhou shows distinct demand-structure characteristics: demand from urgent need (just getting in) and upgrade-driven buyers have become the market’s main force, with upgrade demand releasing relatively quickly.

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 month over month, respectively.

Among them, the 60–90㎡ segment accounts for 33.2% of the market, up 2.29 percentage points month over month. It has remained firmly in first place for three consecutive months and is still the core choice for urgent-need homebuyers. The 90–120㎡ segment accounts for 30.72%, up 0.37 percentage points month over month, highlighting that upgrade-demand buyers still tend to choose mid-sized and larger homes that are “one step to the finish.” The share of premium products above 144㎡ has fallen to 8.78%.

The steady performance of the urgent-need market has become an important underlying factor behind the rebound of Guangzhou’s housing market. Data monitoring by Centaline shows that in 2025, in Guangzhou, commodity housing with total prices ranging from 2 million to 3 million yuan was the main transaction range for urgent-need homebuying, with 12,261 units sold cumulatively for the year. The average transaction price per unit was 2.46 million yuan. Buyers with a budget total price of 2 million to 3 million yuan accounted for 19% of transactions in January and February 2026, matching the share of transactions at that total-price range for the full year last year.

First-tier markets feel warmer

Market changes are first reflected in the real, on-the-ground experiences of first-tier real estate agents. “Since March, the volume of second-hand home showings has increased noticeably compared with February, and transaction volume has also risen significantly. It also happens to be a peak season for school-district property transactions in March, so many parents are speeding up their homebuying plans by timing their moves around enrollment cutoffs. As a result, the transaction pace for homes with high-quality school places has accelerated significantly,” Li Tiancheng, the head of the Panyu sector at a large platform, told reporters.

Beike platform data also corroborates the heightened activity in first-tier markets. Since March, the number of weekly house viewers for second-hand homes in Guangzhou has remained above 20,000 person-times. However, at present the transaction cycle for most listings is still 200 to 300 days. In March, the average transaction price for second-hand homes in Guangzhou was 20,900 yuan per square meter. The number of new listings added that month was 17,289 units.

“Right now, many homeowners’ asking prices are relatively firm, and there won’t be big price cuts anymore. After the earlier adjustments, many second-hand homes already offer good value for money,” Li Tiancheng said. “Taking advantage of the housing market’s ‘small spring,’ we are also actively facilitating deals between homebuyers and homeowners. Based on past experience, after the concentrated transaction period in March and April, Guangzhou’s housing market may enter a phased off-season for property transactions afterward.”

Second-hand home rebound is stronger than new homes

This round of rebound in Guangzhou’s housing market shows a notable characteristic: second-hand home performance is significantly better than new homes. Li Yujia, Chief Researcher at the Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center, told reporters that in March Guangzhou’s second-hand home transactions exceeded 10,000 units, while new home transactions were about 6,000 units. Second-hand transaction volume was roughly twice that of new homes, and the market clearly features urgent-need and urgent-need-upgrade demand as the primary drivers.

The share of large-size unit transactions in the second-hand market has increased somewhat. Li Yujia believes this sign indicates that demand to “sell the old and buy the new” has seen a repair, which has a positive effect on promoting the transaction circulation of the real estate market.

He analyzed that in April, as previously low-total-price second-hand home transactions have been fully released, after some homeowners sell their second-hand homes, they will most likely enter the new home market; or they may choose to purchase larger-area, higher-quality second-hand homes. Active second-hand transactions are expected to further drive demand in both the new home market and the upgrade-type second-hand home market. At the same time, with signs that trading activity is high and prices are stabilizing, this will be of key help for stabilizing market expectations and forming consensus on enabling a transaction cycle of “sell the old and buy the new” and “sell the smaller and buy the bigger.”

Regarding the trajectory of Guangzhou’s housing market in the second half of the year, Li Yujia believes the market is still in a “bottoming-out” phase, and it will take a process to move from bottoming out to fully hitting the bottom. Several factors are mainly involved: first, the monthly volume of second-hand home listings is still higher than transaction volume, so supply remains fairly ample; second, price-cutting and listing-at-lower-price behavior among homeowners is still relatively common, and there is not yet a consensus that prices have broadly stabilized; third, in the new home market, the problem of homogeneous competition among projects within each area remains prominent. The current situation with large supply has not been clearly alleviated. For higher-quality projects, the pace of sell-through has slowed somewhat, and for parts of projects in near-suburban and far-suburban areas, sales are still mainly carried out through promotional measures.

Li Yujia said that the key to Guangzhou’s housing market performance in the second half lies in whether second-hand homes can continue to maintain strong activity, thereby effectively driving the transaction cycle of “sell the old and buy the new” and “sell the smaller and buy the bigger,” so that consensus can be formed that transaction activity can help stabilize prices. At the same time, each administrative district and sub-area needs to adjust the new home approval-for-sale pipeline and the construction schedule reasonably based on listing sell-through conditions, easing the problem of excess homogeneous supply, avoiding vicious competition and price “involution” among developers, and promoting the real estate market to achieve steady and healthy development.

(Editor: Wen Jing)

Keywords:

                                                            Housing market
                                                            Guangzhou housing market