Cooling real estate market takes toll on profits of listed property developers

Smaller sales area and volume both contributed to the bounce in residential building sales in the first quarter in 2013, said Vanke.

Compared with the same period in 2012, the sales area had increased by 33.2 percent in the first quarter. In the 14 major cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, the new supply and sold areas were largely balanced.

A report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that the decrease in sales area is pushing the demand in different cities in different directions. On the one hand, cities with an overheated market will ease up in demand, while third- and fourth-tier cities are facing the risk of oversupply.

Land purchases slowed down as well. The 20 largest real estate companies spent only 13.3 billion yuan on new land in April, a decrease of more than half from the 29.1 billion yuan spent last April, according to a report by Centaline Property Agency Ltd.

Zhang Dawei, an analyst at Centaline, said the decrease was partly due to real estate companies' weaker profitability. But also, these companies had sufficient land reserves in 2013, when new purchases amounted to 558.6 billion yuan.

Quarterly land supply dropped for the first time since 2013, according to China Index Academy. The 300 indexed cities in China introduced 340 million square meters to the market, down 3.8 percent year-on-year. These cities achieved 270 million square meters' sales volume, down 15.3 percent year-on-year.

As residential home market cools, investment keeps on growing	Property price surge 'could soon be over'