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Why Shanghai’s property market is rebounding faster than most other cities in China

Shanghai is the only Chinese city with a year-on-year increase in primary home prices in the first four months, says S&P Global Ratings

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Zhu Wenqianin BeijingPublished: 8:00am, 3 Jun 2026

Shanghai’s second-hand housing market picked up steam in May, with transaction activity accelerating significantly, while the city’s new home market has also seen robust sales.

Industry experts believe Shanghai’s property sales volume and home prices will recover faster than most cities in China after the prolonged downturn of the country’s property market.

“Among the four tier-one cities, Shanghai has been the only city seeing a year-on-year increase in primary home prices in the first four months of 2026,” said Edward Chan, a Greater China property analyst at S&P Global Ratings. “This could support prospective homebuyers’ confidence in purchasing homes in Shanghai.”

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However, S&P noted that primary home prices for the other three tier-one cities had declined by 2.3 per cent to 5.3 per cent over the same period. “In our view, this indicates likely better demand-supply dynamics in Shanghai than its peers,” Chan said.

In May, even with many residents away for the five-day May Day holiday, Shanghai logged 28,023 online registered second-hand home transactions, sustaining a three-month streak of robust trading, according to the Shanghai Real Estate Trading Centre.

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The reading marks the highest sales volume in the past six years, second only to the 30,500 transactions seen in May 2020, said the centre.

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