China’s Top 100 Developers’ Sales Rise 14.6% in October as Slide Eases

Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (file photo, 2012). Residential buildings under construction in Dalian, China.

China’s 100 largest property developers sold 2.54 trillion yuan of homes and other property in the first 10 months of 2026, and October sales picked up from September, according to figures China Index Academy released on Saturday evening, Oct. 31, Beijing time. The private research firm said the year-on-year decline in China top 100 developers sales narrowed by 0.9 percentage point from the January-September period, a sign that the slide is easing even though the market is still shrinking.

China Index Academy is a commercial property research company, not a government statistics agency, so its tallies are industry estimates. The academy published its January-October developer ranking at 9:15 p.m. Beijing time (9:15 a.m. ET). It did not publish a year-on-year percentage for total sales, only the 0.9-point narrowing of the decline.

October sales rebound from September

Business outlet Yicai worked out monthly totals from the academy’s cumulative data. By Yicai’s calculation, the top 100 developers sold 277.34 billion yuan of property in October on a “full-scope” basis, which counts every project a company has a stake in. That compares with 242.1 billion yuan in September, 213.3 billion in August and 217.9 billion in July.

The improvement still leaves sales below last year’s level. Regional property publication Capital Times, which made its own estimate of about 277 billion yuan for October, said a chart in the academy’s report shows October sales below the same month of 2025.

The academy measures sales in two other ways. Sales on an “operator” basis, covering projects a developer manages, came to 2.00 trillion yuan in January-October. Equity-basis sales, which count only each company’s ownership share, came to 1.75 trillion yuan.

By the numbers: what the data show

October was the strongest of the four months for which Yicai published figures. By TBR’s calculation from Yicai’s numbers, October sales rose 35.2 billion yuan, or 14.6%, from September, and were 30.0% above August, the weakest month in the series. September itself had already climbed 13.5% from August, so the market has now gained for two straight months.

The larger picture is less encouraging. Six developers sold more than 100 billion yuan of property in January-October, one fewer than a year earlier, the academy said, and 58 sold more than 10 billion yuan, four fewer. In 2023, 14 companies cleared the 100-billion mark and all 100 on the list cleared 10 billion. By TBR’s calculation, the 100-billion club has shrunk by 57% in three years.

The ranking is tightly bunched at the top. Poly Developments led with 199.0 billion yuan of full-scope sales, just ahead of China Overseas Land & Investment at 198.8 billion and China Resources Land at 180.3 billion, according to Yicai. Greentown China (160.3 billion), China Merchants Shekou (158.9 billion) and C&D Real Estate (103.4 billion) completed the group above 100 billion. Vanke ranked 10th with 57.3 billion yuan.

Source: China Index Academy full-scope rankings as reported by Yicai and Capital Times.

Why buyers came back, according to the academy

The academy gave three reasons for the October pickup. The first was policy: it said the Sept. 29 first-home mortgage-interest subsidy and related measures lifted buyer confidence and lowered the cost of entry for people buying their first homes. The second was supply, as developers rushed out new launches and discounts. The third was a low comparison base from 2025. These are the academy’s explanations and have not been tested independently.

Liu Shui, the academy’s director of corporate research, told National Business Daily that results still vary widely between companies. He said year-end promotions and new high-quality projects could support new-home markets in major cities, but that the market overall is still bottoming out.

The academy also listed recent government steps: on Oct. 20 the National Development and Reform Commission said it would push ahead with mortgage-interest subsidies and more central bank relending, and in October provinces including Anhui and Hubei issued about 23 billion yuan of special bonds to buy back idle land.

Wider market still weak

Separate data from research firm CRIC, cited by Yicai, put new-home sales in 50 major cities at about 11.41 million square meters in October. That was 4.5% more than in September but 12.0% less than a year earlier, although the annual drop was 2.2 points smaller than in September. In China’s tier-one cities, transactions fell 7.8% from September to about 1.73 million square meters but were 1.2% higher than a year earlier.

Official statistics show how deep the downturn runs. The National Bureau of Statistics reported on Oct. 19 that new commercial-housing sales value fell 13.9% year on year in January-September, to 5.38 trillion yuan, and property development investment fell 20.6%. Existing-home sales were the bright spot: floor area of online-signed resale transactions, from housing ministry data, rose 10.7%. The bureau’s October property figures are due in mid-November.

The property slump remains one of the main weights on China’s economy, alongside softer factory activity; see TBR’s report on China’s October factory PMI and on the central bank’s shift to daily overnight repos.

Sources

• China Index Academy: January-October 2026 China developer sales analysis (Chinese)
• Yicai: top-100 developers’ October sales and CRIC 50-city data (Chinese)
• National Business Daily: interview with China Index Academy’s Liu Shui (Chinese)
• National Bureau of Statistics: national property market, January-September 2026 (Chinese)
• Capital Times: China’s top 100 developers’ October sales

Additional sources

• The Paper: January-October developer rankings (Chinese)
• Jiemian: January-October developer rankings (Chinese)