China’s ailing property market faces key test over Golden Week

Some builders are already taking aggressive steps to entice homebuyers. - AFP

BEIJING (Bloomberg): Chinese developers are counting on the upcoming Golden Week holiday period to spark a long-awaited revival in home sales, in the first key test of whether recent policy support is enough to arrest the slump.

The eight-day national holiday starting Friday (Sept 29) is the centerpoint of the industry’s September-October busy season. The stakes are higher than ever this year, as the housing slowdown weighs on China’s economic recovery and developers that are struggling to refinance rely on cash from sales to meet debt obligations.