China housing: lower-tier cities are no longer the driver of the volume growth for new homes. The green line on the chart below shows what the national sales volume growth (YTD Y/Y) would have been if we had excluded the lower-tier cities (i.e. only using data for 4 Tier-1 and 36 Tier-2 cities). They were the major driver of the national-level volume growth in 2016-2018. However, that’s not the case in recent months. Lower-tier cities make up around 65% of the national sales volume of new homes in terms of Gross Floor Area (NBS data).
