Population ageing and asset price issues, especially with regard to housing, exert a major impact on sustainable development. Since China entered the remit of an ageing society in 2001, the proportion of its elderly population has been rising. In the same period, the country's real estate market experienced a rapid rise in house prices following the monetisation reform. Many large cities have experienced waiting lists for the purchase of private housing, and working-class groups not being able to afford it. This has become a social phenomenon in China. This study takes the social reality of China as the main research object, investigates the influencing mechanism of the ageing population structure on the residential commercial housing market, and locates paying ability, ageing, and private housing prices within the same framework. The study found that paying ability can be regarded as a regulating variable between ageing and private housing prices; consequently, a panel threshold effect model was constructed empirically to analyse the non-linear effects of ageing on private housing prices. The results show that when residents' payment levels differ, the effect of ageing on the price of private housing also varies. Finally, by combining the 17-year panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China, it was found that all of the eastern regions of China crossed the threshold in 2010, and that all of the central and western regions crossed the threshold in 2011. At present, therefore, ageing can be said to be exerting an active impact on housing prices in China. To effectively curb the excessive rise in housing prices, the corresponding housing supply policy should be formulated from the perspective of improving the supply of housing to meet demand and the intergenerational transfer of the elderly population.