〔Day Digest〕Mortgage Subsidy Pushes Tier-1 Cities Toward 'Payment Below Rent' as Golden September Splits — Local Strength +15.7% y/y vs 44-City New Home -17.8%

0. Weekly Arc

The 9.28 State Council meeting and 9.29 package — mortgage term extension, 1% first-home subsidy, structural re-lending — are now landing against a sharply split Golden September print ^[1][2]. Tier-1 second-hand is at its strongest stretch since 2020-2021, with Shanghai above 23,000 units for the seventh month, yet the 44-city new home series has re-deteriorated to -17.8% from -10% ^[2][3]. Net: a localized tier-1 bounce inside a still-soft national property book, with policy rather than rates doing the lifting ^[4][1].

1. Housing Bottom Mechanism

• **[NEW] The 'payment below rent' trigger:** on a 1.5M yuan property with 1M yuan commercial loan, the monthly payment-to-rent ratio has fallen from 125% to 106% pre-September, and drops further once the 1% subsidy applies ^[4]. Hong Kong reached the same condition in late 2024, with prices stabilizing from March 2025 — cited as a historical analogue ^[4].
• **[ESCALATED] 40-year mortgage term:** the maximum mortgage term was raised from 30 to 40 years on August 28, lengthening the amortization path and pulling the ratio lower ^[4].
• **Source caveat:** the 'payment below rent' framework and the Hong Kong analogue are single-source via Gelonghui; treat as a hypothesis, not confirmed ^[4].

2. Policy Package and Bank Response

• **[NEW] First-home mortgage subsidy, nationwide from Oct 1:** 1% annual fiscal subsidy for up to 5 years, on new commercial loans ≤1M yuan, for properties ≤120 sqm and priced ≤1.5M yuan; the policy excludes existing-loan rollovers ^[1]. CICC estimates the annual fiscal cost at ~18B yuan, covering ~1.8T yuan in loans ^[5].
• **[NEW] Bank rollout:** Agricultural Bank of China, ICBC, Bank of China, and CITIC all adopted 'no-application-required' processing on September 30 ^[5].
• **[ONGOING] 9.28 State Council:** directed counter-cyclical macro adjustment, expanding re-lending quotas for sci-tech/tech-upgrade, rural and small-firm lending, and studying property-market stabilization ^[1].

3. Golden September — Local Strength vs Aggregate Softness

• **[NEW] Tier-1 second-hand outperformance:** Shanghai 23,581 units in September (+15.7% y/y), seventh consecutive month above 23,000 — the longest run since April 2020 to January 2021 ^[3]. Beijing 15,756 units, 'stable with gains' ^[3].
• **[NEW] Twenty-city second-hand:** 1.19 million units in September, +5.6% m/m, +7.4% y/y; cumulative January-September 1.118 million units, +6.4% y/y ^[3].
• **[ESCALATED] (contradictory) Broad-market weakness:** 44-city new home transaction area growth slowed to -17.8% y/y in September 1-29 from August's -10%; 22-city second-hand area growth slowed from +6.1% to +0.4% ^[2].
• **[NEW] Tier-1 within the 44-city set:** tier-1 new home and second-hand area grew +6.9% and +4.3% y/y respectively — the only bright spot inside an otherwise softer national book ^[2].

4. Trade — Insurance +12.6%, Private Sector +17.6%, EU Anti-Dumping Opens

• **[NEW] China Export Credit Insurance (SINOSURE):** 8-month coverage $854.18B, +12.6% y/y; clients 251,000, +5.2% y/y; new business formats +18%, services trade +40%; domestic trade insurance 401.03B yuan, +14.1% ^[6].
• **[NEW] Private sector:** 8-month imports/exports 19.79T yuan, +17.6% y/y, 56.9% of national total; private enterprises now 92%+ of national high-tech firms (up from 62.4% in 2012) ^[7].
• **[NEW] EU anti-dumping probe:** MOFCOM opened an investigation on imports of p-nitrotoluene from the EU on October 3, citing a ~60% price drop over 2022-2025; the EU has launched 28 trade remedy investigations against China in 2025, with ~50% in chemicals, including 3 consecutive PVC probes ^[8][9].
• **[NEW] Yunnan:** 8-month foreign trade +8.3% ^[10].

5. National Day Travel, Logistics, and Structural Indicators

• **[NEW] Day 3 of holiday (Oct 3):** railway 18.9M passengers, 910 extra trains; highway 62-64M vehicle trips; air 2.25M passengers, 18,019 flights; waterway 2.1M passengers, +9.1% y/y ^[11].
• **[ONGOING] Maritime Silk Road:** container routes now cover 100+ countries; new direct routes to Latin America and Southeast Asia added this year ^[12].
• **[NEW] China-Europe Arctic container route:** 8 voyages in 2026, 7,761 TEU, cargo value 5.33B yuan (energy storage, batteries, NEVs); voyage time 18-20 days, ~50% shorter than Suez; seasonal, resumes next summer ^[13].
• **[NEW] Electricity market:** 8-month transaction volume 5,180 TWh, +19.2% y/y; inter-provincial 1,153.6 TWh (+12.1%); spot 562.7 TWh; green-power trades 218.2 TWh (+6.1%) ^[14].
• **[NEW] Green bonds:** 619 bonds issued in 8 months, 744.27B yuan, +13.91% y/y; bank-interbank market 77.1% of total; transition bonds +80.1%, low-carbon transition bonds +76.7% ^[15].
• **[NEW] Regional:** Hohhot completed its first departure-port tax refund shipment (chemical-fiber fabric, 382,948 yuan, China-Europe rail to Moscow) ^[16]. MOE launched the 2027 graduate campus recruitment month ^[17].

6. Source Quality and What Would Falsify the Housing Call

• Source quality: the 'payment below rent' framework and the Hong Kong analogue come from a single Gelonghui post ^[4]; the mortgage subsidy rollout is multi-sourced via Yicai, vReport, and Caixin ^[1][2][5]. Transaction series are not unified — China Index Academy's 20-city set (+7.4% y/y) covers 20 second-hand markets, while vReport's 44-city/22-city sets show decelerating growth ^[2][3]. Quote as a band, not a point.
• Falsifiable test: the October monthly print of 44-city new home area — a return to August's -10% or better would support the broadening-tier-1 thesis, while a further slide toward -25% would confirm that the September tier-1 strength is a local rebound, not a national turn ^[2][3].