CX Briefing: Top Cities Take Bigger Slice of Land Sales Revenue

A rundown of the news making headlines in and around China:

Land sales diverge: Revenue from residential land sales in 300 Chinese cities jumped 27.5% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 as property prices rose, data from the Beijing China Index Academy show. However, the amount of land sold — 170 million square meters — decreased 5.5%. The reason for this imbalance is that market differentiation has intensified. The top 10 cities accounted for over half of the 860 billion yuan ($120 billion) in revenue. This marks a 19-percentage-point increase from the end of 2024, according to the data released July 4. The revenue in the top 20 cities accounted for 68% of the total, up 17 percentage points. Differentiation has been a major trend amid the property market downturn. Data from the research institute show that from 2020 through 2024, the proportion of residential land sales revenue in the top 10 cities rose from 28% to 34% of the total.