This article is originally created by "Caishuo De Mingbai" and is published synchronously on various platforms. Reprinting is not allowed.

The central bank has released the loan data for the entire year of the previous year, from which we observed a significant change worth noting: the growth rate of mortgage loans has slowed down dramatically, and it seems that everyone is no longer taking loans or buying houses.

Entering the Spring Festival of 2023, there is a stark contrast between the consumption data and new housing sales data.

Will you buy a house in 2023?

01

Last year, due to the pandemic, the real estate market was extremely sluggish, and many sales staff from real estate agencies and companies were unemployed.

According to statistics, by 2022, the sales area of newly built housing nationwide decreased by 27%, and the sales volume slid by 28%.

This trend continued into this year's Spring Festival, during which the real estate market appeared to be quite quiet.

Statistics show that during the Spring Festival of 2023, the real estate market nationwide dropped by nearly 60% compared to the Spring Festival of 2022.

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Looking at different types of cities, there is still a significant difference between provincial capitals and cities of various tiers.Statistical data indicate that the transaction volumes in the three first-tier cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are all zero, while Shanghai only has a mere 16, but this figure has already declined by nearly 97% compared to last year's Spring Festival. In second-tier cities, led by Dalian and other provincial capitals, the trading volume is better than that of last year's Spring Festival.

However, many real estate industry experts have come forward to boost the morale of this sector. Regarding the overall sluggishness of the real estate market during the Spring Festival, experts have stated that this is mainly because everyone is traveling and going home for the New Year, leading to a relatively flat housing market, and these phenomena should be short-term.

Experts unanimously believe that the current policy is clear, which is comprehensive support for real estate, and the financial situation is also relatively relaxed, but demand is still in a period of adjustment.

For the post-festival real estate market, many experts predict that after a long period of adjustment, the housing market may be reactivated in 2023 and are confident that it will return to the right track with policy support.

02

However, an increasing amount of data seems to be contradicting these experts. In the latest annual data released by the central bank, we found that by the end of last year, the housing loan balance in our country was 38.8 trillion yuan, which increased by 1.2% compared to the previous year.

Although it has managed to maintain growth and has not declined, the growth rate has significantly decreased by 10 percentage points compared to the growth rate of over 11% in 2021.

With such a trend, negative growth may occur in the next few quarters.In contrast, household business loans increased by 16.5% year-on-year, and consumer loans increased by 4.1% year-on-year, both of which grew significantly faster than housing loans. This fully shows that it is not that people do not take out loans, but that people do not buy houses. 03 As early as five years ago, Jack Ma once publicly stated that the least valuable thing in the future is houses. He also reminded young people not to buy houses, and the future housing prices will be like onions. Now it seems that Jack Ma's conjecture is becoming a reality. It is obvious that China's economic momentum is changing. Real estate is no longer the most important driving force. On the contrary, the most important driving force should come from consumption. Various data from this year's Spring Festival have shown this gratifying change. People are more willing to spend money on food, tourism, culture, sports and other daily consumption. Funds no longer flow to real estate in a one-way manner as before, but begin to flow to all walks of life, so the real economy has a new opportunity.