China's "tough love" monetary policies, to cool the ardor of the property market, are dampening the passion of buyers. The volume of transactions slumped markedly in September and October, traditionally the peak season, and sellers are resorting to novel ideas to unload their property.
"Buy a villa, get a plane for free." That pitch, reported by Shanghai's eastday.com, was made for a villa in the Minhang district of Shanghai.
The listing price: 65 million yuan ($10.2 million).
The plane, modeled after a World War II-era fighter, has neither an engine nor a fuel tank and it lies in the villa's backyard.
The agent said the property comes with a private tennis court and a 4,300-square-meter garden.
The owner bought the property in 2000 as an investment but has never actually lived there, the agent said.
Experts say that case provides new evidence that the housing market has reached a turning point. According to Uwin Real Estate Research Center, 695,900 square meters of new housing were traded in October in Shanghai, a one-month drop of 27.56 percent and a one-year drop of more than 50 percent. The average sales price also weakened, by 1.65 percent in a year, to 19,689 yuan a square meter.
Sales of used homes hit their lowest point in five Octobers: 8,100 units changed hands, down 21.4 percent in a month and 40.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Century 21 China Real Estate's Shanghai Research.
Analysts said those figures bode ill for the year-end, when sales are typically slow. And sales gimmicks aren't as effective as price reductions.
"To be honest, using the fighter jet or a high-end sedan as a gift is not the best choice, because such a gift is not what homebuyers really want, and it will increase the total cost of owning the property" because of maintenance, said Song Huiyong, a research director with Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants.
Joe Zhou, local research director for Jones Lang LaSalle real estate consultancy, said, "At the moment, quality and price are the deciding factors. And only by offering a reasonable price and an attractive discount can property projects receive better sales."
