Centaline Property: Property prices continue to rise, CRI returns have fallen for four consecutive months, and the supply-demand balance remains unchanged

Yang Mingyi, Senior Co-Director of the Research Department at Centaline Property, pointed out that in December this year, the latest Centaline City Rental Index (CRI) reported a return rate of 3.43%, a decrease of 0.03 percentage points month-on-month. With interest rates being lowered, the property market has seen active buying and selling, and property prices have shown a clear upward trend, while rents have remained stable at high levels during the leasing off-season. Since September, property prices have outperformed rents for four consecutive months, with the Centaline City Index (CCI) rising by 4.87%, while the rent increase during the same period has been relatively modest, with the CRI rising by only 0.02%.

Due to the increase in property prices being greater than the increase in rents, the return rate has fallen for four consecutive months, dropping from a high of 3.6% in August 2025 to 3.43% in December, a cumulative decline of 0.17 percentage points. As property prices continue to rise, it is estimated that the CRI return rate will continue to trend soft, but it is still expected to stabilize at around 3.4 cents in January.

In December this year, local banks did not follow the U.S. in cutting interest rates, with the H mortgage rate remaining at 3.25%. During the same period, the rental return rate was 0.18 cents higher than the H mortgage rate. Although the gap between the two has narrowed, it has been consistently lower than rent for eight consecutive months. It is expected that the short-term CRI return rate will continue to be higher than the H mortgage rate, and the pattern of being lower than rent will remain unchanged