Chinese cities tighten property firms' access to escrow funds-sources
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[August 02, 2023] By
Clare Jim and Ziyi Tang
HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) -Some Chinese city governments have made it
harder for developers to access tens of billions of dollars from
property sales held in escrow accounts, people familiar with the matter
said, raising risks the cash-strapped companies will be squeezed even
more.
The moves are aimed at ensuring the completion of more unfinished
projects at the city level, they said, at a time home sales are sliding
and the future of the whole sector is uncertain.
The tightening appears to run contrary to the plan of the central
Chinese government, which has assured help to stabilize a sector that
has been hit by both a years-long liquidity crunch and slumping demand.
"That's like a Catch-22 dilemma," said Gary Ng, Asia Pacific senior
economist at Natixis, adding that while local governments may want to
ensure that all housing projects can be delivered, it is hard for
developers to do it without access to liquidity.
The curbs may mean private developers, who have been hit harder by the
crisis in the sector, will have lower capital usage efficiency, and can
imply a larger credit risk for some small developers, said Ng.
Chinese developers are allowed to sell residential projects before
completion but are required to put those funds in escrow accounts. Local
city governments permit them to withdraw a portion of the funds,
depending on the progress of construction.
As defaults rippled across the property sector, regulators last year
relaxed some escrow rules in an effort to ease the liquidity stress for
developers, enabling them to finish construction work on apartments.
Some city governments, however, have started curbing developers' access
to the escrow funds from the second quarter of this year as the outlook
for the sector worsened, with sales trending down since April on weak
demand and the economic outlook darkening.
Senior executives at three Chinese developers said they were not able to
withdraw funds even after the completion of some projects. "It is a
general phenomena now," said one of them, whose firm has not yet
defaulted on any debt.
Two of them said that more than 80% and 90% of their cash, respectively,
is now trapped in the escrow accounts, and efforts to withdraw funds for
construction purposes have been thwarted by the local authorities.
That compared to around 30% before the sector was hit by the debt crisis
in mid-2021, and around 60% in the early days of the crisis, according
to analysts.
The two executives, who declined to be named as they were not authorized
to speak to the media, said they believe the tighter access was a result
of local authorities wanting to ensure there was enough capital for
completing home construction in the cities.
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Unfinished apartment buildings stand at
a residential complex in Guilin, China, September 17, 2022.
REUTERS/Eduardo Baptista/File Photo
"It has become very difficult again in the past few months for us to
withdraw money from the escrow accounts," said an executive at one
of the developers that has defaulted on its debt obligations said.
"At the end of last year it had been easier after the government
easing."
In the first half of this year, funds that developers used for
property development reached nearly 7 trillion yuan ($977 billion),
and about a third of that was from down payments and presale funds,
according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
China's housing ministry did not respond to Reuters request for
comment on the tightening of developers' access to escrow funds.
The Hang Seng Mainland Properties Index reversed direction from a
0.7% rise to fall as much as 0.5% in the afternoon session after the
Reuters report, before closing down 0.1% on Wednesday.
FALTERING HOUSING DEMAND
The new measures come as property demand is sluggish - China's
property sales between May and June showed the largest monthly drop
this year, based on sales by floor area, and investment in property
also slumped.
A person who works at a state bank in a city in Hunan province,
speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the local housing
authority has ordered the bank to implement stricter rules for
withdrawal of escrow funds.
Under those rules, the authority has asked the bank to make escrow
funds available only to developers who have other sources of funding
to cover construction costs, said the person.
Hunan's housing regulator did not respond to a request for comment.
Another developer said some banks are also holding up the funds as
they now evaluate a firm's different projects across cities
together, so that pre-sale proceeds from one could be used to cover
the construction of another development in another city.
In cities such as Hefei and Xiamen, the local governments manage the
accounts of a batch of developers together, so sales from one
project could be used to cover the construction costs of a different
developer, executives at two other developers said.
The Hefei and Xiamen governments did not respond to requests for
comment.
($1 = 7.1652 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Clare Jim in Hong Kong and Ziyi Tang in Beijing;
Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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