Floor price exceeds 85,000 per square meter, breaking the record! Yuexiu Property beats Poly, acquiring Guangzhou Racecourse land for over 23.6 billion yuan

Source: Times Finance Author: Chen Zexuan

The fenced-off Racecourse Phase 1 Plot

The first land auction of the Year of the Horse has set a new record for the highest unit price of residential land in Guangzhou.

On February 25, Yuexiu Property won the Guangzhou CBD Zhujiang New Town residential land parcel “Racecourse Phase 1” with a total price of 23.604 billion yuan, a premium rate of 26.60%. The transaction price ranks second highest in Guangzhou, with a residential floor price approaching 85,500 yuan per square meter, replacing Yuexiu Property’s December 2023 acquisition of the Haizhu Pazhou West District AH040331 land parcel (75,700 yuan per square meter) as the highest residential land floor price in Guangzhou.

The land is located south of Huangpu Avenue and east of Racecourse Road in Tianhe District, on the site of the Guangzhou Racecourse established in 1992. As a venue for commercial horse racing, Guangzhou Racecourse has witnessed the peak moments of Guangzhou’s horse racing culture.

After ceasing operations in 1999, the racecourse land gradually transitioned to uses such as automotive, home furnishings, and dining establishments. Today, after 30 years of development, Zhujiang New Town has become the city’s core where land is extremely valuable. The original racecourse land no longer meets urban development needs, and land resources within the area are scarce. As a result, this undeveloped and unrenovated area is also called the “last piece of treasure” in Zhujiang New Town.

The transaction of Racecourse Phase 1 has ignited the “first fire” in Guangzhou’s land market this year. Despite high capital requirements, the land attracted fierce competition from seven real estate companies, including China Resources Land, Yuexiu Property, Poly Developments, Zhujiang Industrial, Guangzhou Urban Investment, Guangzhou Metro, and Guangzhou Construction. Due to high market attention, online bidding attracted over 100,000 viewers, causing the bidding platform to crash multiple times.

During the bidding process, state-owned enterprises Poly Developments, local state-owned Yuexiu Property, Zhujiang Industrial, and Guangzhou Urban Investment actively bid. After the total price exceeded 21.344 billion yuan, only Poly Developments and Yuexiu Property remained in the contest. Ultimately, after nine hours and 243 rounds of fierce competition, Poly Developments was outbid by Yuexiu Property. This land auction was also the longest in Guangzhou’s history.

Racecourse Phase 1 bidding page crashes

Is SKP coming?

According to the transfer documents, Racecourse Phase 1 includes five subplots. Three are commercial and business land parcels with a total area of 78,500 square meters and a planned building area of no more than 337,200 square meters; two are Class II residential land parcels with a total area of 54,100 square meters and a planned building area of no more than 222,700 square meters; the rest are underground spaces.

The land’s capital threshold is extremely high, with a starting total price of 18.644 billion yuan, ranking second among Guangzhou’s residential land sales, only behind the Liwan District “Guangchuan Phase 2 and 3” land parcel sold in October 2022, which had a starting price of nearly 18.76 billion yuan.

In addition to the high total price, the transfer conditions are quite strict. The transfer documents require the winning bidder to invest no less than 6 billion yuan in the two commercial and business land parcels AT111321 and AT111323, with fixed asset investments of at least 5 billion yuan, and the project must be fully held after completion; the other commercial and business land parcel AT111338 must include the construction of a village equity property with a planned building area of 91,400 square meters, which must be repurchased at cost by the village collective, along with the free allocation of 7,962 square meters of reconstructed resettlement property.

Of particular interest is that the AT111321 parcel must attract a high-end fashion department store operator, with the project’s sales contribution reaching at least 30 billion yuan within six years of operation; the AT111323 parcel must include the construction of an internationally renowned five-star hotel and hotel-style apartments with a planned building area of no less than 45,000 square meters. Within six years of operation, the project’s operating output value must reach at least 2 billion yuan.

Guangzhou once planned to introduce the global high-end fashion department store SKP. Market rumors suggested that the mall would be located on the Racecourse land, but this has not been officially confirmed. As a globally renowned high-end shopping mall, by 2025, SKP will have only four locations in China—Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Wuhan. The SKP in Beijing has repeatedly been crowned the “nation’s top store.”

It is worth noting that in August 2021, the China Government Procurement Network issued a “Tianhe District Racecourse Land Function Enhancement Development Planning Project Competitive Negotiation Announcement,” which proposed benchmarking against international CBDs like Beijing SKP. The plan aimed to position the land scientifically according to the development requirements of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s core cities, Guangzhou’s goal to build a globally vibrant city, and the “old city with new vitality” concept. Since then, rumors of SKP’s potential introduction to the Racecourse land have continued to ferment.

Luxury “neighbors” with house prices exceeding 300,000 yuan per square meter

Looking back at Guangzhou’s land auction history, before Racecourse Phase 1 became the highest-floor-price residential land, the top spot was held by Yuexiu Property’s December 2023 acquisition of the Haizhu Pazhou West District AH040331 land parcel, with a floor price of 75,700 yuan per square meter. Second was Poly Developments’ September 2024 purchase of the Tianhe Linjiang Avenue North AT080722 land parcel, with a floor price close to 66,700 yuan per square meter. The project on that land, Poly Yuexi Bay, opened last year.

Currently, the top total price land in Guangzhou is the Panyu Asian Games City land parcel, which sold for 25.5 billion yuan in December 2009, jointly acquired by R&F, Agile, and Country Garden, maintaining the highest total price record for over 16 years. The second is the Racecourse Phase 1 land, and the third is the Changlong land parcel in Panyu, acquired by China Resources Land in April 2023 for 19.7 billion yuan.

The reason Racecourse Phase 1 broke multiple records is due to a combination of factors. CRIC Guangzhou-Foshan Region pointed out that, from the first-hand residential market perspective, in 2025, Tianhe will be the only district in Guangzhou with year-over-year increases in both volume and price. Tianhe’s transaction area reached 610,000 square meters, up 31% year-over-year; the average transaction price was 81,200 yuan per square meter, up 7%. Tianhe’s annual transaction volume reached 49.6 billion yuan, accounting for one-fifth of the city’s total.

Meanwhile, the luxury housing market remains strong, with Zhujiang New Town consistently ranking among Guangzhou’s top luxury districts. However, in terms of supply, Zhujiang New Town has seen no new residential projects launched in the past five years, resulting in a scarcity of first-hand luxury homes.

According to CRIC Guangzhou-Foshan, the main apartment sizes in Tianhe’s transaction structure are between 140 and 200 square meters, with an increasing share of high-end improvements over 200 square meters. Notably, apartments over 300 square meters account for 34% of transactions in the Pearl River New Town area, mostly million-yuan luxury homes, with market share of ultra-luxury products priced over 30 million yuan increasing.

In terms of location, the Racecourse Phase 1 land is only a few hundred meters from the top luxury benchmark Qiaoxin Huiyue Tai. According to Beike, there are currently eight second-hand homes for sale at Huiyue Tai, with total prices ranging from 49.99 million to 180 million yuan, and unit prices from 211,100 to 300,500 yuan per square meter.

The land is also about 1,000 meters from the popular luxury project Poly Yuexi Bay, which opened on November 7 last year. That evening, sales exceeded 10 billion yuan, making it the first project nationwide to break 100 million yuan in daily sales. The average transaction price was 170,000 yuan per square meter, with the highest single-unit price surpassing 300,000 yuan per square meter.

With the launch of Racecourse Phase 1, this “last piece of treasure” may reshape Guangzhou’s commercial landscape and luxury housing map, and the market is eagerly awaiting.