Haste or Waste? The Role of Presale in Residential Housing
This paper provides the first theoretical framework and empirical evidence on housing presale policies. Constructing a novel dataset across 270 major cities in mainland China, we identify 3,179 unfinished residential projects begun between 2010 and 2019 from a government-run citizen complaint portal. Stricter presale criteria (when developers may begin presale) and stricter post-sale supervision of construction funds both predict fewer unfinished projects, but only the presale criterion slows new housing development. A back-of-the-envelope analysis suggests the current policy bundle lies inside the Pareto frontier: tightening supervision alone could cut unfinished projects by 55% without slowing development.
-
-
Copy CitationZiyang Chen, Maggie Rong Hu, Ginger Zhe Jin, and Qiyao Zhou, "Haste or Waste? The Role of Presale in Residential Housing," NBER Working Paper 32013 (2024), https://doi.org/10.3386/w32013.Download Citation
-
More from the NBER
In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews.
