The National Day holiday was a key window for observing the effects of this round of the property market policy package.

According to monitoring by the Central Plains Real Estate Research Institute on October 7, new home subscriptions in 50 key cities nationwide during the holiday rose more than 15% year-on-year, with first-tier cities performing especially strongly.

Real estate practitioners in first-tier cities also reported a clear improvement in sentiment.

"Since the second half of the year, Shanghai's property market has seen relatively large overall transaction volumes, and they have been fairly stable," a staff member at a Shanghai real estate company told Futures Daily. In terms of prices, small, low-total-price homes have stopped falling and stabilized, while transaction volumes for large, high-total-price homes remain limited.

Ms. Lu, an agent at another Shanghai real estate company, said that new home prices in some areas have edged up steadily in recent days, with little overall change, but transaction activity has remained brisk, and new home sales have outpaced second-hand home sales. "Some new homes in good locations with solid projects are relatively scarce."

"The biggest feeling this year is that the market is better than the same period last year. Many people looking at homes are also more confident, and homes in good locations are still relatively scarce," said Ms. Li at an agency on Jingsan Road in Zhengzhou.

Recently, multiple government departments have rolled out a "policy package" targeting the real estate market.

On August 28, the central bank, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission successively issued three documents, restructuring the industry's basic systems across sales, credit, and financing, and making it clear that presale housing sales have become the prevailing trend. On September 20, the newly revised Regulations on the Administration of Housing Provident Funds took effect, relaxing conditions for withdrawals and loans. On September 29, the Ministry of Finance, the central bank, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly issued an interest subsidy policy for residents' home purchase loans. Starting October 1, for first homes of no more than 120 square meters and with a total price of no more than 1.5 million yuan, fiscal interest subsidies will be provided at an annualized rate of 1 percentage point on the loan principal for up to five years. On the same day, the central bank lowered the PSL rate by 0.25 percentage points and expanded the supported areas to the "six networks."

"The implementation of the policy package has pushed down the cost of buying a home, driving a concentrated release of housing demand in the short term," said Li Xuanyi, senior energy and chemicals analyst at Galaxy Futures. From October 1 to 6, the average daily transaction area of commercial housing in 30 large and medium-sized cities rose 0.4% year-on-year.

However, the market is still in a stage of trading volume at the expense of price, with clear divergence. The property market in core cities is recovering, while the property market in third- and fourth-tier cities continues to weaken.

Liu Mengmeng, black metals researcher at Huishang Futures, said the current property market shows a state of "viewing activity leading first, while transaction conversion remains cautious," and trading volume at the expense of price is still the mainstream.

When can the warmth on the real estate sales side be transmitted to the futures market? Industry participants said the "Golden September and Silver October" peak season for the steel market is expected to begin materializing in mid-October.

"What is first repaired by the improvement on the property sales side is developers' cash flow expectations and risk appetite, not immediate building materials consumption. More critical is the structural change. The share of steel used in construction has fallen from 58% in 2020 to 49% in 2025, and real estate's share of total steel consumption has dropped from about 32% to 23%, a clear decline in weighting," Li Xuanyi said.

Liu Mengmeng believes that although a property market recovery is conducive to valuation repair in black series commodities, it is not a reversal at the demand level. Glass and rebar are closely linked to the property market, but glass demand is highly dependent on real estate completions. In the short term, the futures market is trading policy expectations, while in the medium term it remains under pressure from declining completions, with the overall trend weak.

As for rebar, real estate accounts for more than 60% of its downstream demand. Once policy and sales data change, market sentiment reacts quickly.

Overall, valuations of some black series commodities may recover somewhat, but signals of a trend reversal have not yet appeared.

It is recommended to watch three sets of indicators going forward: first, the pace of steel inventory accumulation in October; second, hot metal output and steel mill profitability; third, the concentration of construction site resumptions and the intensity of rush work in mid-to-late October. Only if demand recovers beyond expectations will rebar prices have the possibility of breaking upward.