From "Breaking the Ice" to "Deepening" The New Model of Real Estate Development Enters a New Stage of Institutional Implementation

The year 2026 marks the beginning of the "14th Five-Year Plan." This year's government work report once again clearly states the goal of "focusing on stabilizing the real estate market," signaling an important shift from "addressing issues" to "deepening efforts" in the development of the real estate sector. It is noteworthy that real estate-related work is still placed under the section of "effectively preventing and resolving risks in key areas" in the report. This arrangement reflects the objective reality that stabilizing the current real estate market is still a work in progress, and it contains deep policy logic. Constructing a new model for real estate development is fundamentally a strategy to resolve risks and achieve market stability and healthy industry development. In other words, stabilizing the market and promoting transformation are not two separate tasks, but two dimensions of the same goal. A stable market environment creates the necessary conditions for building a new model, while the gradual implementation of the institutional framework of the new model will provide fundamental institutional guarantees for the long-term stability of the market. The government work report proposes to "deeply promote the construction of the basic system and supporting policies for the new model of real estate development." This represents a noteworthy evolution from the previous expression of "accelerating the construction of a new model for real estate development." If "accelerating construction" emphasizes direction establishment and top-level design, then "deeply promoting the construction of basic systems and supporting policies" indicates that the new model has entered a new stage of institutionalization and systematization. In core areas such as real estate development, financing, and sales, a series of institutional restructurings are being orderly advanced. In the development phase, the project company system is being solidified to isolate risks and clarify responsibilities; in the financing phase, the lead bank system is being implemented to help establish more stable and standardized bank-enterprise relationships; in the sales phase, the promotion of the existing housing sales system fundamentally prevents delivery risks. The government work report states, "further leverage the role of the 'white list' system for ensuring housing delivery to prevent debt default risks," which promotes the normalization of the system based on consolidating risk prevention achievements. In terms of the institutional mechanism for supply and demand matching, efforts are being made to establish a "human-housing-land-money" element linkage mechanism, promoting supply-demand balance from the source by determining housing based on people, land based on housing, and money based on housing. The report's proposal of "implementing city-specific policies to control increments, reduce inventory, and optimize supply" essentially reflects this mechanism under current market conditions. In the housing supply system, the dual-track system of market and security continues to improve. The government work report first proposes to "strengthen housing security for newly married and newly parenting families, and support the housing needs of families with multiple children," closely linking housing policy with population policy, marking an important step in accurately meeting the housing needs of different groups. At the same time, the report proposes exploring multiple channels to activate existing commercial housing for use as affordable housing, reflecting a significant shift in the supply model of affordable housing. In terms of improving residential quality, the government work report states, "orderly promote the construction of safe, comfortable, green, and smart 'good houses,' and implement housing quality improvement projects and property service quality enhancement actions." The policy focus has shifted from "building good houses" to "managing good houses," forming an institutional system that covers quality management throughout the entire lifecycle of housing The construction of a new model for real estate development is a gradual process that requires a comprehensive handling of multiple relationships, including the current versus long-term, market versus security, incremental versus stock, and promoting development versus preventing risks. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's new urbanization continues to advance, with ample space for optimizing and adjusting urban stock. The public has formed new expectations for "good housing," indicating that the real estate sector still has significant growth potential. The government work report also includes the high-quality promotion of urban renewal as a key task in new urbanization, proposing new directions such as the construction of innovative industrial communities and business communities, providing an important entry point for the real estate industry to find a new role in the high-quality development of cities. Overall, this year's government work report outlines a more complete policy system for the real estate sector, with clearer goals and more specific institutional arrangements. The evolution of the expression from "accelerating the construction" to "deepening the promotion of basic systems and supporting policy construction" marks the transition of the new model of real estate development from establishing direction to implementing systems, from "breaking the topic" to "deep cultivation." We look forward to a solid step forward in high-quality real estate development in the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, through a positive interaction between stabilizing the market and promoting transformation