这一趋势仅集中在少数大城市。上海二手房三月成交量创四年新高，其中约半数交易价格低于200万元人民币。北京、深圳及阿里巴巴和DeepSeek总部所在地杭州也出现类似现象。然而，较小的城市并未受惠于这波回暖，二三线城市的二手房价格自2023年以来尚未出现过月度正增长。各地政府虽已推出多项刺激措施，包括提高公积金贷款额度和放宽非本地居民购房限制，但效果有限。
对开发商而言，老破小的走俏是雪上加霜。资金紧张的开发商正依赖新房库存去化来缓解压力，但买家偏好老旧二手房意味著这些库存难以消化。彭博智库中国开发商股指年内已下跌24%，远逊于沪深300指数2.7%的涨幅。野村首席中国经济学家陆挺指出，尽管少数大城市的住宅市场可能正在企稳，但这不足以抵消全国性衰退的冲击，中国仍处于漫长的房地产萧条之中。
Five years into China's property downturn, homebuyers are returning but shunning developers' new apartments in favor of so-called laopoxiao — old, shabby, and small flats mostly built during a Soviet-inspired construction boom in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite poor insulation and outdated plumbing, these units attract buyers with their prime locations near good schools, public transit, and urban amenities. In Shanghai, the average price of apartments under 70 square meters rose 2.4% from a November low through April, bucking the nationwide decline.
The recovery in older homes is confined to a handful of top-tier cities. When Shanghai's used-home sales hit a four-year high in March, roughly half of transactions were priced below 2 million yuan. Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou are experiencing similar trends, but smaller cities have been left behind — tier-two and tier-three cities have not posted a single month of positive used-home price growth since 2023. Local governments have attempted to stimulate the market by raising housing provident fund quotas, expanding purchase eligibility to non-local residents, and cutting value-added taxes on resales, with only mixed results.
The preference for aging apartments is bad news for cash-strapped developers sitting on a glut of unsold new inventory. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of Chinese developer shares has plunged 24% this year, far underperforming the CSI 300's 2.7% gain. Nomura's chief China economist Ting Lu warns that while a residential recovery may be emerging in a few large cities, it is insufficient to offset the nationwide slowdown, concluding that China remains in a prolonged property bust.