Housing market reorients itself toward buyers' post-epidemic expectations

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

That's how Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina starts. China's real estate giants may be forgiven if they invoke Tolstoy to make sense of their current situation.

The residential property market in China is now rife with prospective homebuyers whose preferences have been transformed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following stay-in orders associated with partial or full lockdowns across the country, people are spending more time at home. Suddenly, the functionality of a home has been redefined by circumstances relating to the virus outbreak.

How should a modern home be in the post-pandemic era? What features should it have? What are the factors that homebuyers must consider before spending their hard-earned money on buying a residential property? What are the implications for developers, construction contractors, architects, and interior designers?

Such questions now populate the housing market discourse. Analysts suggest property developers should urgently start to focus on homebuyers' new preferences if they are serious about turning around the fortunes of the industry.

Even as the pandemic has the rest of the world in its tentacles, it is relenting, and almost subdued, in China where several prevention and control measures appear to be paying off.

This has huge ramifications for the country's massive property industry, one of the mainstays of the economy. According to surveys, the stagnant transactions in the housing segment of the market in February and March may see a rebound in demand sooner than later.

For instance, a survey conducted jointly by the Beike Real Estate Research Institute, which is part of real estate online brokerage Ke, and online financial news outlet Hexun shows that despite most people postponing their homebuying plan, the epidemic per se has not dampened their purchase enthusiasm.

Residential properties like apartments in large cities, which boast sophisticated medical facilities and high-quality property management, figure among the most preferred choices of prospective homebuyers.