The real estate sector is transitioning from a "high leverage, high turnover" model towards high-quality development. The risk of "delivery difficulties" in the property market, which once caused significant concern, has now been largely resolved.
Several developers recently disclosed their 2025 delivery figures, indicating that the task of ensuring housing completion is nearing its conclusion. By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, approximately 7.5 million previously sold but hard-to-deliver homes have been handed over nationwide. Among them, Country Garden delivered around 1.85 million units, while Greenland, Sunac, Zhongnan Group, Seazen, and CIFI each delivered hundreds of thousands of units, effectively alleviating the nationwide issue of delivery delays.
Senior executives from multiple developers have confirmed that the primary task of ensuring project completion is essentially finished.
With this major burden lifted, the industry is entering a phase of exploring new operational models. Recent policy signals from the central government outline a clear direction: maintaining risk prevention as the baseline, stabilizing the market as the objective, accelerating the shift to high-quality development, moving away from high-leverage and rapid-turnover practices, systematically advancing the construction of "quality housing," and progressively implementing the sale of completed homes to achieve "what you see is what you get."
Yan Yuejin, Deputy Director of the E-House China R&D Institute, noted that risks in the real estate sector have begun to recede, with clearer signs of price stabilization emerging recently. Some cities, particularly major ones, are showing early signals of market recovery.
**Conclusion of the "Delivery Assurance Campaign"** Developers have recently been actively reporting their completion results. Country Garden reported delivering approximately 1.85 million homes between 2022 and 2025, stating that its delivery assurance work is in its final stages. Greenland Holdings announced delivering over 8 million square meters of residential space in 2025, equivalent to roughly 80,000 units based on an average size of 100 square meters per unit. Previous data showed Greenland delivered about 260,000, 280,000, and 140,000 units in 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively, totaling approximately 760,000 units over four years. Sunac disclosed deliveries of 186,000, 312,000, 170,000, and 54,000 units from 2022 to 2025, surpassing 720,000 units cumulatively, and indicated that its delivery assurance efforts are largely complete.
Indeed, several developers have achieved delivery volumes in the hundreds of thousands in recent years. According to statistics, Seazen delivered over 38,000 units in 2025, with a three-year cumulative total exceeding 278,000 units; CIFI delivered over 270,000 units from 2022 to 2024; Zhongnan Group delivered approximately 390,000 units between 2021 and 2025; and Zhongliang Holdings delivered around 290,000 units from 2022 to 2025.
At the national level, the delivery assurance initiative has clearly entered its concluding phase. A national housing and urban-rural development conference held over a month ago confirmed that the 2025 delivery tasks have been fully accomplished. Previously, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development stated at a press briefing that more than 7.5 million "hard-to-deliver" sold homes had been successfully handed over nationwide.
Data released on the Ministry's website in November 2025 indicated that 3.918 million units out of the 3.96 million targeted in the delivery campaign had been delivered, achieving a 99% completion rate. Concurrently, approved loans for projects on the national "whitelist" exceeded 7 trillion yuan, providing substantial financial support for project construction and delivery.
These figures result from a nearly three-year systematic effort to mitigate risks. During the delivery push, task forces at the national, provincial, and municipal levels coordinated closely, reinforcing the responsibilities of local governments, developers, and financial institutions. Policies were tailored to specific cities and projects, with individualized strategies ("one building, one policy") guiding classifications: projects meeting certain conditions received financing support through the coordinated financing mechanism via the "whitelist," while insolvent projects underwent accelerated bankruptcy restructuring or liquidation, with homebuyers' rights prioritized in judicial proceedings.
As these measures took effect, concerns among homebuyers regarding project stalls significantly diminished, and most projects previously facing financial challenges have now been successfully delivered.
**Developers Rebuilding Self-Sustaining Operations** "For the past four years, the company's top priority has been ensuring deliveries," shared an insider from an eastern China-based private developer that previously achieved sales of 150 billion yuan. "By the end of 2025, only a few thousand units remain to be delivered. The pressure is now manageable, and the most difficult period is behind us."
Another executive from a leading private developer also confirmed that delivery work is largely complete. "With minimal new land acquisitions in recent years, ongoing projects have significantly decreased. 2026 is expected to be a year of renewal for the company, although we will remain cautious in land investments, avoiding plots with poor locations or excessively high prices."
As the large-scale delivery assurance effort winds down, many developers are shifting focus to debt resolution, asset restructuring, revitalizing existing land banks, and restoring their operational sustainability. In 2025, several developers, including Country Garden, Sunac, CIFI, and Jinke, made substantial progress in debt restructuring or reorganization.
Yan Yuejin pointed out that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, real estate risks were particularly acute, manifesting in developer debt, stalled projects, declining transactions, falling prices, and defaults on existing mortgages. "Through a series of targeted policy measures, real estate risks have significantly decreased, with positive signs of accelerated resolution in some areas," he stated.
He explained that since mid-2021, the property market entered an extended adjustment phase, exposing the risks of the high-leverage, high-turnover model, culminating in a wave of construction halts and mortgage payment suspensions in 2022. Against this backdrop, policy tools like the coordinated financing mechanism and market-based, legal approaches to debt resolution played crucial roles in risk control and mitigation.
Yan believes that as delivery assurance advanced, project suspensions notably decreased across regions. Recent years have seen a rise in timely and high-standard deliveries, effectively protecting homebuyer interests and leading to a noticeable reduction in early mortgage repayments. Recently, signs of price stabilization have become clearer, with some cities, especially major ones, showing recovery signals. These developments lay a solid foundation for market recovery and help rebuild industry confidence.
**Policy Direction Defined: Stabilizing Risks, Forging a New Model** The Central Economic Work Conference held late last year outlined clear directives for 2026's real estate work, emphasizing the need to maintain底线 (guard against bottom-line risks), actively and steadily resolve risks in key areas, and focus on stabilizing the property market. The conference called for city-specific policies to control new supply, reduce inventory, optimize offerings, encourage the purchase of existing homes primarily for affordable housing, deepen reforms of the housing provident fund system, systematically advance "quality housing" construction, and accelerate the establishment of a new development model for real estate.
2026 marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. The plan's recommendations explicitly advocate for "promoting high-quality development in real estate," providing systematic guidance across institutional frameworks, housing supply structure, quality improvement, and risk prevention, charting the course for the industry's medium- to long-term development.
Historically, many systems in China's real estate sector were designed to expand supply and alleviate housing shortages. While supporting rapid industry growth, this also fostered a development model characterized by "high debt, high leverage, high turnover," whose risks and drawbacks became starkly evident during the recent adjustment phase and are no longer sustainable.
Regarding the new development model, Ni Hong, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, recently stated in an interview that future efforts will focus on strengthening foundational systems for development, financing, and sales. In the development phase, the project company system will be reinforced to ensure dedicated, closed-loop fund management. For financing, a lead bank system will be promoted, where one bank or a consortium centrally manages project financing. In sales, the transition to completed-home sales will be gradual, achieving "what you see is what you get."
The year-end National Housing and Urban-Rural Development Work Conference further emphasized that stabilizing the real estate market remains a key focus for 2026. It advocated for city-specific measures to manage new supply, reduce inventory, and optimize offerings, utilizing urban renewal and village renovation to revitalize existing land, promoting the purchase of existing homes for affordable housing, resettlement, dormitories, and talent housing. It also stressed that city governments should fully utilize their regulatory autonomy to optimize policies timely, support rigid and upgradable housing demand, and foster stable market operations.
Within this policy framework, although nationwide property sales have not fully stabilized, since the fourth quarter of 2025, some major cities with stronger economic fundamentals and better-matched supply structures have begun to show signs of recovery, providing crucial early indicators for broader industry recuperation.