The year 2025 has presented a stark contrast in China’s real estate sector. According to CRIC data, the top 10 property developers saw their sales volume decline by 10.06% year-on-year in the first five months.
Huafa Shares Defies Industry Downturn with Strong Performance
While the industry faces challenges, Huafa Shares has delivered impressive results that turned heads across the sector. From January to May, the company achieved total sales of 43.26 billion yuan, marking a 20.6% year-on-year increase.
Industry reports indicate that Huafa Shares has maintained a continuous upward sales trajectory this year, with growth rates significantly outpacing the average of top 10 developers.
Consistent Positive Signals from Huafa Shares
The company has been consistently sending positive signals to the market. On May 25, Huafa Shares distributed 2024 annual cash dividends totaling 285 million yuan. Over the past five years, the company’s cash dividend payout ratio reached 35.83%, with 20 cash dividend distributions since its listing in 2004.
Stable growth has emerged as the standout feature of Huafa Shares’ performance this year.
The Secret Behind Huafa’s Stability in Turbulent Times
Reinventing the Product Moat
After multiple rounds of industry regulation, scale effects have diminished while product quality has become increasingly crucial. Competition now increasingly depends on delivering “quality housing.”
This year’s government work report emphasized meeting people’s needs for high-quality living spaces by improving standards and promoting the construction of safe, comfortable, green, and intelligent “quality housing.”
Huafa Shares has taken the lead in this new direction. In 2024, responding to national calls, the company pioneered the “Technology + Quality Housing” product system technical standards, implementing housing that meets all the government’s criteria and helping transition the industry from quantity to quality.
The standards incorporate smart home systems, intelligent communities, robotic services and other AI-era living scenarios while addressing emerging social trends like drone services and specialized community elderly care.
Huafa has further enriched the concept of “quality housing” by launching its “Huayou Hui” ideal community brand in 2024. The program focuses on four themes—sports, growth, health, and active living—reviving traditional Chinese neighborhood relationships and adding soft infrastructure to complement physical housing quality.
After one year, the program has established over 20 community categories, formed more than 200 communities, hosted over 1,500 events, and attracted 80,000 participants, significantly enhancing resident satisfaction and loyalty.
Market response has been positive. Huafa Zhuhai Bay, the national demonstration project for “Technology + Quality Housing,” broke Zhuhai’s three-year record for first-phase sales and became the only project in the area to achieve multiple rapid sales phases.
During the May Golden Week, Huafa projects nationwide achieved 3.3 billion yuan in sales, a 10% year-on-year increase, setting a new historical record. With strong market demand for green, spacious, and comfortable housing as noted by the National Bureau of Statistics, Huafa’s technology-enhanced quality housing is expected to maintain its competitive edge.
Strengthening the Core Business Foundation
Despite overall market contraction, a clear trend has emerged among top developers: concentration of resources in first- and second-tier cities. Fang.com data shows that while land acquisition spending has decreased significantly, 92.5% of investments are directed at these key cities.
Huafa Shares has maintained this strategic focus since 2012 when it implemented its “Rooted in Zhuhai, Expanding Nationwide” strategy. In 2024, the company continued acquiring prime plots in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xi’an and other high-tier cities, reinforcing its “3+1” business foundation.
Currently, Huafa’s sellable projects are mainly located in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an, Chengdu, Nanjing, Kunming, and Zhuhai—cities with strong economic vitality, favorable housing policies, excellent public resources, and strong population attraction that typically lead market recovery.
This strategy has proven resilient during industry adjustments. CRIC data shows Huafa ranked first in Nanjing’s sales, sixth in Guangzhou and Chengdu, while dominating its home market of Zhuhai with 61% market share and achieving 10 billion yuan sales in just 128 days.
Diversifying Business Operations
As the industry transforms, leading developers are building multifaceted capabilities, shifting from heavy-asset models to balanced “heavy-light” approaches to create unique growth ecosystems.
While maintaining leadership in core development, Huafa has successfully diversified into commercial operations, property management, and upstream-downstream industry chains, entering a harvest period.
In commercial operations, after over a decade of development, Huafa Commercial has entered 28 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, operating 11 commercial complexes, 62 supporting commercial projects, and 32 commercial-office projects totaling 2.6 million square meters.
Financial reports show Huafa Commercial’s rental income grew 15.41% in 2024, continuing into 2025 with 10.79% first-quarter growth. The Zhuhai Shizimen Huafa Mall Phase III is set to open this year, further strengthening the commercial portfolio.
In property management, Huafa completed a strategic reorganization on May 29 by acquiring Zhuhai Jiuzhou Modern Services. Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Huafa Property now serves over 400 projects across 40+ cities with 40 million square meters under management, ranking 13th in China’s 2024 property service rankings. The segment reported 1.675 billion yuan revenue in 2024, up 18.85% year-on-year.
Additionally, Huafa has actively expanded across the industry chain, achieving notable results in urban renewal, design, marketing, prefabricated construction, and long-term rentals.
As industry transformation deepens, diversified operations may become the new engine for stable growth, with Huafa providing a model for navigating market cycles.
Conclusion
Huafa Shares has built competitive advantages through its proven “trinity” approach—premium products, precise investments, and diversified operations—enabling counter-cyclical growth.
Multiple analyst reports highlight Huafa’s effective inventory management, shareholder returns, optimized financing structure, resilient sales and investments, and abundant pre-sold resources as factors ensuring future performance, with many maintaining “buy” recommendations.
For Huafa Shares, new opportunities for future development are clearly emerging.
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China’s New “Quality Housing” Standards: Safety, Comfort, and Implementation
