Chengdu published its implementing opinion on 26 October, jointly issued by the municipal housing and construction bureau, the planning and natural resources bureau and the Sichuan office of the National Financial Regulatory Administration. Suzhou had gone two days earlier, Hefei one day earlier. All three follow the same national notice on improving the commercial housing sales system, and all three touch the same five areas: tighter pre-sale management, sales of finished homes, a lead-bank arrangement, more financing support and changes to land supply.
By a non-official tally compiled by the reporting outlet, at least 13 cities now have detailed rules in place: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Shiyan, Suzhou, Hefei and Chengdu. That is a count, not an official register, and the pace of publication suggests it will keep growing.
One date divides everything
The three newest sets of rules share a cut-off: 28 August 2026. For commercial housing projects whose state-owned construction land use right grant announcement is published on or after that date, a pre-sale application now requires the individual building to be structurally topped out. Before, developers only had to show progress against a construction-stage benchmark. Moving the gate to topping out pushes the point at which buyers' money can be collected several months later in a typical project.
What counts as topped out is where the three cities diverge, and the difference is practical rather than cosmetic.
Suzhou is the strictest on paper. The roof slab, rooftop structures and ancillary facilities must have their concrete poured; the construction, survey, design, contractor and supervision parties must issue a signed and sealed acceptance record for the main structural works; and the local housing authority must verify on site before a pre-sale permit can even be applied for. Hefei defines it by actual progress: the main load-bearing structure reaches the designed roof elevation and the top floor is poured. Chengdu is terser still — the top slab of the pre-sold building is poured.
A developer working in all three markets therefore faces three different evidence standards on the same milestone.
When the money leaves the account
Topping out is only half of the change. The other half is that pre-sale proceeds are now held in full and monitored end to end, with release tied to completion rather than to progress.
Suzhou requires down payments and individual mortgage loans to go into the supervised account, and releases the money only after the project completes its finished-home sales filing, at which point the account is closed. Hefei releases after completion acceptance and once water, electricity and gas connections are ready for handover. Chengdu releases after completion acceptance filing and the filing for delivery of ancillary facilities, but obliges the developer to keep a suitable reserve for handover and first registration of title.
For projects already under way, all three sort them by construction stage, with differences in transition deadlines and extra conditions. Hefei notably sets no transition cut-off for legacy projects, leaving itself more room to manoeuvre.
Deposits: 1%, 3%, 5%
On finished homes, Suzhou and Hefei say projects on land granted from 28 August 2026 should give priority to selling completed units. Chengdu says it will promote the practice in an orderly way and will disclose finished-home sale information in the land grant announcement; where the announcement is silent, the developer decides according to market demand. All three use a filing system and allow a deposit to be collected once the construction permit is issued.
The deposit cap now falls into three tiers. Suzhou follows Shanghai and Shenzhen at no more than 3% of the total price, with the deposit paid straight into the supervised account, unusable while supervised and released after the finished-home sales filing. Chengdu and Hefei set 5%, in line with Guangzhou, Wuhan, Tianjin and Hangzhou. Beijing is so far alone in requiring a low-ratio deposit of no more than 1%.
Cao Jingjing, director of index research at the China Index Academy, says the cities are working from a common template — topping-out pre-sales for new land, full-process escrow, staged transition for existing projects, deposit supervision and instalment payment of land premiums — and that the design tries to strengthen delivery and fund safety while leaving room for digesting existing stock and for construction.
The land market has not cooled
Longer payback periods and higher capital thresholds change how developers underwrite a site. The auction results so far are not a story of retreat. The day after Shanghai published its rules, its tenth batch of land sales closed with the Yangpu district Jiangwan plot, in a historic conservation area, going for a 21.46% premium after 109 bids, and two Minhang plots for 24.44% after 177 bids, with several major developers participating. After Guangzhou's rules took effect, a plot in Huangpu Science City sold at a 26.6% premium after 71 rounds. These are individual auction outcomes, not a market average, and they say more about prime locations than about the reform's overall cost.
Analysts point to the offsets: land premiums payable in instalments and the lead-bank arrangement lower the barrier to bidding, partly countering the topping-out and post-completion mortgage release constraints.
Supply conditions help. China Index Academy monitoring to 25 October puts Wuxi, Chengdu and Suzhou at the top of the pending-auction table by total starting price. Average starting prices for plots in key cities are around 320 million yuan; in Wuxi, Chengdu, Suzhou and Nanjing, the per-plot average sits between 320 million and 570 million yuan. Most sites are small to medium, so a single project ties up comparatively little capital.
What to watch
The year-end land supply peak is close and the pipeline in key cities is still substantial. Whether the auctions stay warm depends on three things the rules themselves cannot settle: whether home sales keep stabilising, whether developers' funding actually improves, and how strictly the new local rules are enforced once the publicity fades.