You may have seen the below chart or sensational headlines like “China property crashed” or “Two decades of capital gains have been completely erased in China” or “Two decades of equity wiped out”
The data is True. China’s real estate market has been falling significantly since COVID.
The data quoted from Federal Reserve Economic Data is reliable.
The property slowdown started after September 2021.
Prices peaked around September 2021 at an index value of approximately 113. This was the height of the Chinese property boom.
Since then, the market has undergone a massive correction.
If we talk about latest April 2026 situation, nearly all the “real” price gains made over the last two decade are wiped out. In fact, real property prices in China are almost same as than they were in 2005.
Why Did This Happen?
In late 2020, the Chinese government introduced strict deleveraging rules to stop property developers from taking on too much debt and it caused massive companies like Evergrande and Country Garden to run out of cash, leading to halted projects and a collapse in buyer confidence.
Economic Shift: China is currently trying to move its economy away from being dependent on real estate (which used to account for about 25-30% of their GDP) toward “High-Quality Development” like tech and green energy, so it might be just people moved their investment away from Real Estate to something else like AI stocks / new technology or gold / silver etc..
