China's Listed Developers Hit by First Drop in Annual Earnings

The growth of combined revenue of China's publicly traded property developers has slowed from 78% to 58% and just 2.5% over the past three years respectively. Making matters worse, their combined profits declined 3.9% year-on-year to ¥1.56 billion in 2011, the first drop in a decade.

In the first quarter of this year, their revenues were up 5.6% to ¥67.54 billion and their profits fell 2.5% to ¥9.44 billion, compared with the same quarter last year.

Growth in revenues will continue to slow in 2012, or even plunge into negative territory, market watchers predicted.

Government policies such as the limit on the number of homes an individual or a household can buy and the cancellation of mortgage rate discounts for first-home buyers have reined in China's once sizzling real estate market.

In the first four months of this year, investment in the real estate sector rose 18.7% year on year to ¥1.58 trillion; the growth rate was much slower than in the same period a year earlier, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. The rate for investment in residential properties was at an even slower pace of 13.9%.

Total floor space sold between January and April sank 13.4% year on year to 215.62 million square meters, where sales of residential space were down 14.9% to 190.12 million square meters, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Property sales revenue between January and April dipped 11.8% year on year to ¥1.24 trillion, where revenue from residential properties was down 13.5% to ¥1.03 trillion, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The downward trends have boosted floor space available for sale, which stacked up to 303.08 million square meters as of the end of April, up 33.4% from the a year earlier. Residential properties up for grabs at the end of April totaled 194.43 million square meters, up 44.1% from a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

$1 = ¥6.31