‘Too afraid to buy’:China’s slowing economy overshadows property easing moves

Real estate agents have been calling Daisy Wu non-stop to get her to buy an apartment in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, but the 28-year-old said she was too worried about the slowing economy to consider making a purchase. Wu's concerns belie a raft of measures rolled out by the Beijing government this week to revive the economy and target the deepening crisis in its massive debt-riddled property sector which has been on the decline since 2021. The measures include lower mortgage rates for first-time homebuyers, but analysts warn that like Wu, the sentiment among many Chinese is too weak for these moves to put a floor under the world's largest asset class, where roughly 70% of household wealth is invested.