Maintaining performance, continuing debt reduction, and diversifying operations are the three primary tasks currently facing private real estate developers. Among them, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd., COUNTRY GARDEN, SUNAC, and Longfor Group have been the first to stabilize during the industry's downturn.
The real estate sector entered an adjustment phase in the second half of 2021, with many former private giants, such as China Evergrande Group, SUNAC, and COUNTRY GARDEN, becoming burdened by debt. By 2026, private developers have actively engaged in debt restructuring and launched multiple rounds of plans. While most still struggle on the edge of losses, a few survivors have emerged.
Currently, private developers generally face three major tasks: maintaining performance, continuing debt reduction, and diversifying their operations. By 2025, which private developers have managed to stabilize amidst the industry's winter?
Sales and land acquisition are two key benchmarks for testing a developer's stability. The former is the main source of current revenue and profit; once sales are under pressure, developers lose stable cash flow returns. The latter reflects the company's future strategic layout. Acquiring too little land means having no properties to sell in the future, while acquiring too much leads to inventory accumulation, impacting profits. If the core sales business incurs huge losses and cannot generate its own cash flow, both diversification and ongoing debt reduction will lose momentum.
An analysis of 2025 sales rankings from CRIC Research and land acquisition rankings from the China Index Academy reveals that among the top 20 developers by full-scale sales, only four are private enterprises: Longfor Group (0960.HK), COUNTRY GARDEN (2007.HK), SUNAC (1918.HK), and Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. (002244.SZ). Based on equity sales, there are five private developers in the top 20, with Bangtai Group (unlisted) ranking 19th in addition to the four mentioned. However, in the top 20 for equity land acquisition value in 2025, only Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. and Bangtai Group are private developers. As China Vanke is currently a mixed-ownership enterprise dominated by state capital, it is not within the scope of this analysis.
Among the four listed private developers, SUNAC and COUNTRY GARDEN encountered financial distress in May 2022 and August 2023, respectively. Longfor and Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. are among the few private developers that have not faced such distress. "Financial distress" for developers refers to severe financial difficulties where they cannot meet debt obligations, leading to credit risk events.
Now, COUNTRY GARDEN and SUNAC have successfully reduced debt, with debt restructuring even becoming a significant source of profit. Longfor has the fastest-growing diversified operations, while Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. is the only one among the four private enterprises to achieve growth in both revenue and net profit.
After shedding their debt burdens, 2026 will be a challenging year for private developers transitioning from traditional developers to comprehensive service providers. How to repair operations after credit risk shocks will also be an urgent problem they need to solve.
COUNTRY GARDEN and SUNAC have improved their performance through debt restructuring. High debt, high turnover, and high leverage were once the "magic weapons" for the rapid expansion of private developers. During the industry's peak, many private enterprises blindly expanded across sectors to maintain valuations, and some even over-invested as the industry approached a downturn. These excessive actions have led to structural difficulties for private developers, including high inventory of existing homes, large land reserves, tight cash flow, and heavy debt burdens.
At the industry's peak in 2021, private developers held 11 spots in the top 20 by full-scale sales, according to CRIC. However, due to industry downturn and sales pressure in recent years, only four private developers remained in the top 20 by full-scale sales in 2025: Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd., COUNTRY GARDEN, SUNAC, and Longfor Group. In the top 20 by equity sales, there were five, with unlisted Bangtai Group ranking 19th with sales of 29.86 billion yuan.
A further comparison of the revenue and net profit attributable to shareholders changes for the four listed private enterprises shows that, as of publication, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. had not disclosed its full 2025 financial report. Therefore, data from the first three quarters of 2025 were selected, showing a 60.6% increase in revenue and a 46.6% increase in net profit attributable to shareholders during the reporting period.
According to Wind predictions, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd.'s full-year 2025 revenue is forecasted to be 72.406 billion yuan, an estimated year-on-year increase of 4.71%; net profit attributable to shareholders is projected to be 2.866 billion yuan, an estimated increase of 12.57%. Although this is a significant decrease from the growth rates in the first three quarters, it still represents "double positive" growth.
In 2025, both COUNTRY GARDEN and SUNAC saw growth in net profit attributable to shareholders, while Longfor's net profit attributable to shareholders fell by 90.2% to 1.022 billion yuan. The growth for the former two was due to gains from debt restructuring, whereas the decline for the latter was due to drag from its development business.
In 2025, it was not uncommon for private developers to see improved profits or reduced losses due to debt restructuring. Besides COUNTRY GARDEN and SUNAC, companies like Kaisa Group, CIFI Holdings, and Shimao Group also turned losses into profits through this means.
Taking SUNAC as an example, a major reason for its significant reduction in losses was the recognition of total gains of 32.97 billion yuan from debt restructuring in 2025, an increase of 23.08 billion yuan year-on-year.
Its financial report indicates that SUNAC's restructuring gains stem from the difference between the book value of debt and the actual settlement consideration or the value of the restructured debt, recorded as a one-time item in current profits. However, excluding this factor, SUNAC would still have been in a loss-making position in 2025.
SUNAC's core sales business continues to decline. Since its public default in 2022, SUNAC's sales scale has shrunk significantly, dropping to only 36.84 billion yuan in 2025, merely 6.2% of its peak in 2021.
Liu Shui, Director of Enterprise Research at the China Index Academy, stated that while many developers have recently improved their profit performance through debt restructuring, this improvement is more accounting-based than a fundamental repair of operational conditions. Gains from debt restructuring are not sustainable. Whether a company truly "recovers" depends on core indicators such as sales, gross profit margin, and operating cash flow.
When the core business declines, sales scale is no longer a safety cushion for stable growth for private enterprises. Business diversification has become their pursuit, mainly in property management services, long-term rental apartments, commercial operations, project construction management, and cultural tourism real estate.
In this regard, Longfor Group is at the forefront. Among the four developers mentioned, Longfor has the highest proportion of non-property development revenue, at 27.51%.
Financial reports show that, calculated on an "adjusted profit" basis, Longfor's operations business and services business generated profits of 8.84 billion yuan and 4.89 billion yuan, respectively, with gross profit margins of 75% and 28%. Together, these two businesses contributed 7.92 billion yuan to core net profit attributable to shareholders.
At the results meeting on March 27, Zhao Yi, Executive Director and CFO of Longfor Group, stated that the operations and services businesses have become the ballast and stabilizer for the company's profits. In 2025, shopping mall rental income increased by 4.0% year-on-year to 11.21 billion yuan, with an occupancy rate maintained at 96.8%. Property service revenue and area under management reached 11.2 billion yuan and 360 million square meters, respectively.
Chen Xuping, Chairman and CEO of Longfor Group, pointed out that the operations and services businesses are expected to maintain double-digit annual growth. Longfor Group will strive to push these two businesses to achieve a profit scale of 10 billion yuan as soon as possible, with related revenue surpassing real estate development by 2028 at the latest.
However, not all diversification attempts by private developers bring new growth points for the company.
A senior real estate industry analyst mentioned that during the period of rapid real estate development, some private developers, relying on the inertia of scale effects, blindly followed trends into cross-sector ventures, leading to issues such as inability to leverage core competencies, organizational and talent mismatches, and tight cash flow. Typical cases include Evergrande's venture into car manufacturing and COUNTRY GARDEN's venture into pig farming.
"This is essentially the 'Evergrande ailment' of the real estate industry. On one hand, they blindly seek new stories to maintain valuations; on the other hand, these new areas often come with government subsidies and land concessions, allowing developers to acquire land at low prices," he said.
Wu Jing, Director of the Tsinghua University-Hang Lung Center for Real Estate, previously noted that given the普遍 tight cash flow among developers, for diversified businesses of private developers to synergize strongly with the core business, it is best to choose businesses that can leverage core competencies and are natural extensions up or down the industrial chain.
Land acquisition scale and pace are core indicators of the operational resilience of private developers. Sustained and steady land acquisition indicates ample cash flow, smooth financing channels, and sufficient market confidence, serving as a direct signal of operational stability. Conversely, a cliff-like drop or complete halt in land acquisition often signals pressure on the funding chain, strategic contraction, or even impending distress.
Currently, land acquisition among private developers is becoming more polarized. Leading stable companies are focusing on replenishing land banks in core cities, while most companies are contracting comprehensively due to debt repayment pressure and inventory reduction risks. The land acquisition landscape has become an intuitive measure of industry stratification.
According to data from the China Index Academy, among the five private enterprises mentioned, only Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. and Bangtai Group made it into the top twenty for equity land acquisition value. Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. ranked seventh with 39.1 billion yuan, and Bangtai Group ranked thirteenth with 12.6 billion yuan.
Equity land acquisition refers to the land acquisition amount truly attributable to the company based on its equity share in jointly developed projects.
Relatively speaking, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. has the most stable operations, consistently ranking in the top twenty for land acquisition annually since 2021. Bangtai Group is known as an industry "dark horse," breaking into the top twenty for two consecutive years, whereas in 2021 and 2022, it didn't even make the top 100 list.
Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. and Bangtai Group reflect two typical land acquisition strategies among current private developers.
As the sole private seedling among trillion-yuan developers, Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. insists on deepening its presence in Hangzhou. According to the company's 15 land acquisition announcements disclosed in 2025, it added 23 plots for the year, with 18 located in Hangzhou city, 4 in Jinhua, and 1 in Huzhou. By land acquisition amount, 97.1% of Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd.'s investment was in Hangzhou.
Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd.'s investment strategy aligns with most private developers: contracting the layout and focusing land acquisition and development on a single core hotspot city, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and strong second-tier core hotspot cities like Hangzhou and Chengdu.
A senior practitioner who previously worked for a large developer and is now in project management at a small private developer stated that long-term deep cultivation in a single city helps companies build closer collaborative relationships with local governments, grasp government land supply rhythms, detect policy adjustment signals earlier, and form unique information barriers.
Simultaneously, focusing on core regions helps shorten decision-making chains, improve fund collection efficiency, and achieve rolling development where "proceeds from prior projects fund land acquisition for subsequent projects."
Ma Qianli, Research Director of CRIC Deep Consulting and Purui Intellectual Research Center, stated that private enterprises prefer high-value, high-certainty improvement-type or luxury projects to ensure sales pace and profit margins.
Bangtai Group has chosen another path: actively avoiding fiercely competitive regions like the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin, and Guangzhou-Shenzhen, and instead focusing on core cities in central and western China and strong third-tier cities, such as Suining and Deyang in Sichuan, Xinzhou and Changzhi in Shanxi, seeking opportunities in markets with lower attention from large developers.
According to Viewpoint Index statistics, Bangtai Group acquired 34 plots in 2025, distributed across 15 cities in 9 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, with 7 plots acquired in Kunming.
Bangtai Group also focuses on acquiring small to medium-sized plots, with an average acquisition cost of 400 million yuan. The highest was 1.102 billion yuan, and the lowest was only 88 million yuan. The premium rates for acquired plots were generally below 15%. The combination of numerous small and medium plots allowed Bangtai Group to rank fourth among developers and first among private enterprises in terms of land acquisition area, at 2.87 million square meters.
The aforementioned private developer practitioner mentioned that Bangtai Group generally has a short cycle from land acquisition to project launch, typically kept within five to six months, enabling rapid capital recovery. COUNTRY GARDEN was once a representative of this quick-launch model, but this approach is no longer mainstream. "Developers no longer blindly launch quickly; some actively delay launches to wait for a favorable time window." If sales upon launch fall short of expectations, Bangtai also quickly adopts price reduction measures.
In contrast, the other three companies have temporarily withdrawn from the land acquisition competition. The last year SUNAC appeared on the land acquisition chart was 2021, when the company had already breached all "three red lines." After concentrated land grabbing in the first half of the year, its funding chain broke in the second half. 2021 was also the peak year for COUNTRY GARDEN's land acquisition, when it was the industry leader. Subsequently, COUNTRY GARDEN's land acquisition amount plummeted in the following two years, and its liquidity crisis fully erupted in 2023, leading to its exit from the competitive stage.
2021 was a highlight year for developer land acquisition. According to data released by the Ministry of Finance, national state-owned land use right transfer income reached a historical peak of 8.71 trillion yuan. That year, ten private enterprises (including Vanke) were among the top twenty in land acquisition, with COUNTRY GARDEN, SUNAC, Longfor, and Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co.,Ltd. all on the list.
Nine private enterprises were in the top twenty for land acquisition in 2021, but only two remained in 2024 and 2025, showing a continuous downward trend over five years. However, Liu Shui, Director of Enterprise Research at the China Index Academy, stated that private developers' land acquisition showed signs of bottoming out and stabilizing in 2025. In terms of land acquisition value, private developers accounted for 11.2% in 2025, an increase of 2.7 percentage points from 8.5% in 2024. In terms of the number of private developers, there were 14 in the top 100 by land acquisition value in 2025, an increase of 3 from 11 in 2024.
Longfor has proactively scaled back its land acquisition scale in the past two years, merely maintaining its market share in core cities, ranking 32nd and 72nd in the land acquisition charts in recent years. Its management stated that debt repayment takes priority over investment and land acquisition.
At Longfor's 2025 results presentation, Zhao Yi stated that 2025 was the peak year for debt maturities at the group level, with a total of 22 billion yuan in domestic and foreign debt due. The maturity scale will drop to around 6 billion yuan in 2026 and shrink to about 1.3 billion yuan by 2030.
Currently, Longfor's financial condition is overall stable. Its inventory at the end of 2025 was 176.9 billion yuan, primarily consisting of high-quality assets in core cities. Compared to new land acquisition, the current focus is more on destocking existing inventory.
Ma Qianli stated that changes in land acquisition scale by private developers are closely related to the industry's phased adjustment and their own operational development.
"The change in private enterprise land acquisition from 2021 to 2025 essentially represents a shift from high leverage, nationwide expansion, and high growth to defensive investment characterized by low leverage, regional focus, high certainty, and small-scale, fast-turnaround projects," he summarized.
Due to narrowed financing channels, rising financing costs, and large-scale expansion in past years, private developers face greater debt pressure compared to state-owned and central enterprises.
Zhao Kuncheng, a partner in the debt restructuring department of King & Wood Mallesons, stated that when formulating domestic debt restructuring plans, private enterprises should base them on their actual situation, striving for optimal terms on core restructuring clauses like debt structure optimization and payment node adjustments to avoid the dilemma of secondary default.
Among the top twenty in sales, both COUNTRY GARDEN and SUNAC have embarked on debt restructuring paths and passed restructuring plans in 2025. A similarity in their plans is the shift from solely seeking debt extensions to a combination of debt reduction, debt-to-equity swaps, and extensions, aiming to directly cut debt.
SUNAC was the first large developer to clear its offshore debt. On the evening of November 5, 2025, SUNAC announced that its $9.55 billion in offshore debt had been completely cleared.
Earlier in early 2025, SUNAC announced the successful restructuring of 15.4 billion yuan in domestic debt, expecting to reduce domestic debt by over 50%. The remaining debt was extended for up to 9.5 years, meaning SUNAC would have no repayment pressure for five years.
SUNAC conducted two rounds of offshore debt restructuring. The first occurred in November 2023, where the company completed the restructuring of approximately $10.237 billion in offshore debt through "debt-to-equity swaps + new debt issuance," cumulatively reducing debt by $4.525 billion. However, the market recovery was slower than expected, and SUNAC's sales continued to be sluggish, causing dissatisfaction among creditors.
On January 10, 2025, Cinda Hong Kong, a creditor holding $30 million in principal of offshore debt, applied to the Hong Kong High Court to liquidate SUNAC. On April 17 of that year, SUNAC urgently launched a second round of offshore debt restructuring, pioneering a "mandatory full debt-to-equity swap," converting approximately $9.55 billion of offshore debt entirely into company shares, thereby achieving "zero" offshore debt.
Simultaneously, to avoid dilution of management equity, SUNAC announced an "Equity Structure Stability Plan," providing certain restricted shares with conditions to major shareholders.
For every $100 of principal in new mandatory convertible bonds received by creditors, approximately $23 worth of bonds would be issued to major shareholders or their designees. Major shareholders would only obtain extremely limited rights, such as voting rights, for these restricted shares within six years, and could not dispose of, mortgage, or transfer the restricted shares.
SUNAC's restructuring plan was a first in the industry. The aforementioned senior real estate analyst believed that the shares offered by SUNAC in the debt-to-equity swap were among the most actively traded real estate stocks in the market, the conversion price and timing were relatively reasonable, and coupled with remaining market trust in Sun Hongbin and SUNAC, allowed the plan to pass smoothly.
Compared to SUNAC's "forceful" approach, COUNTRY GARDEN's plan a few months later appeared more moderate, offering multiple options.
On December 5, 2025, COUNTRY GARDEN announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that its offshore debt restructuring plan had passed court hearing and taken effect. Previously, its 13.77 billion yuan domestic debt restructuring plan had also been approved by creditor meetings. With the combined success of domestic and offshore restructuring, COUNTRY GARDEN's overall debt reduction scale is estimated to exceed 90 billion yuan, greatly alleviating repayment pressure within five years.
The core of COUNTRY GARDEN's domestic and offshore debt restructuring plans is "debt reduction, extension, and conversion." Taking the offshore plan as an example, it offered options including cash repurchase, debt-to-equity swap, new debt replacement, and payment-in-kind interest. Among these, offering a cash repurchase was relatively rare in previous offshore debt restructuring cases.
If creditors chose cash repurchase, they could recover cash immediately, but the bond face value would be significantly discounted, resulting in at least a 90% principal reduction. Creditors could also choose options like extension, partial equity conversion, or mandatory debt-to-equity swap.
Developer debt restructuring has entered the latter half of the implementation stage. For private developers, successful debt resolution is only the first step. It can help reduce debt scale, extend repayment periods, and provide some restructuring gains in the short term, but it is difficult to restore their ability to generate internal cash flow. Moreover, beyond the restructured debt, they often have other liabilities.
Fang Chengqi, Chief Real Estate Analyst at Caitong Securities, pointed out in a recent research report that developers need to find operational repair strategies after credit risk shocks. He believes that compared to traditional developers whose income comes solely from real estate projects, transforming into light-asset companies focused on operational management, consulting, and construction management for commercial and logistics facilities, and broadening financing channels through REITs to achieve asset exit and efficient operation, are more likely to achieve operational repair.
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