(Yicai Global) Jan. 17 -- Some 95.7 percent of the Chinese real estate firms to have released their unaudited sales data for 2022 so far logged a fall in sales as demand remains sluggish amid an economic downturn resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Forty-five out of the 47 developers to have published sales figures for last year posted a decline in turnover and 25 of them saw sales more than halve from the year before, according to financial reports seen by Yicai Global.

Poly Developments & Holdings performed the best, but turnover still plunged 14.5 percent year on year to CNY457.3 billion (USD67.6 billion), according to research firm China Real Estate Information Corp. Although Vanke came second, its sales plummeted over 30 percent to CNY416.9 billion while Country Garden ranked third with turnover also sinking more than 30 percent to CNY357.4 billion.

The developers who fared the worst were Sunac Group, whose sales plunged 71.7 percent, followed by R&F Properties with turnover diving 68 percent, Shimao Group, whose sales tanked 67.9 percent, and ZOINA Construction at 67.1 percent. All four defaulted on their debts last year.

And the only two to achieve sales growth in 2022 were Singapore’s Yanlord Land and state-owned Yuexiu Property. Yanlord Land logged a 14.3 percent uptick in sales year on year to CNY68.1 billion (USD10.1 billion), while Yuexiu’s turnover climbed 8.6 percent to CNY125 billion, exceeding its annual target.

State-owned Yuexiu Property did well because its debt levels are low, giving the Guangzhou-based firm the leverage to buy prime land, when many of its peers were busy reducing their debts.

The reason for Yanlord Land’s success was due to its focus on the high-end residential market, meeting the needs of home buyers who wish to upgrade their homes, rather than just driving growth.

And it appears Yanlord has read the market correctly. The main incentive to buy property last year, at around 38 percent of home buyers, was to improve their living conditions, according to a survey by the China Index Institute. This was a jump of 5 percentage points from 2021.

Overall, the floor area of commercial properties sold slumped 24.3 percent in 2022 year on year to 135,837 million square meters and sales tumbled 26.7 percent to CNY13.3 trillion (USD1.9 trillion), the National Bureau of Statistics said today. While the floor area of residential housing plunged 26.8 percent and turnover crashed 28.3 percent.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor