China Property Digest: Home price falls easing

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Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:34pm IST

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BEIJING, June 18 (Reuters) – Here is a look at the latest news, numbers and more from China’s real estate market.

Investment in the property sector accounted for 13 percent of China’s gross domestic product in 2011.

REUTERS NEWS

Jun 18 – China’s home prices dipped for the eighth straight month in May but the pace of decline eased, fanning talk that the market may be bottoming out and the recent monetary stimulus could set the stage for a rebound.

Jun 18 – China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said that it would stick to property tightening measures and work with other regulators to strengthen the results already achieved.

Jun 14 – China’s central bank and banking regulator denied media reports that they had relaxed rules on home mortgages, underlining the government’s resolve to cool the property sector.

Jun 13 – The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, said that media reports quoting an unnamed NDRC official as saying loosening property policies was a “second card to save the market” were fabricated.

Jun 11 – Shares in debt-laden Greentown China soared as much as 36 percent on Monday morning after Hong Kong conglomerate Wharf Holdings announced plans to acquire a stake in the Chinese home builder.

Jun 7 – Any move by Beijing to relax restrictions on home purchases for investment is a sure sign that the government is worried about the economy heading for a sudden dive and has resorted to desperate measures to avoid a stimulus programme.

DATA

– China’s real estate investment in May grew 18.2 percent from a year earlier, up from April’s 29-month low of 9.2 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

– China has built at least 20 million square metres of shopping centres in 14 major cities over the past decade, with a further 14.8 million square metres under construction, global property consultancy CBRE Group said.

– China spent 55.8 billion yuan from the government’s coffer to help build affordable homes in the first five months, up 71.7 percent from the same period last year, the Ministry of Finance said.

– China Vanke, the country’s largest real estate developer by sales, reported a month-on-month rise of 19 percent in its sales in May to 10.7 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), reversing a decline in April.

– Average home prices in 100 key Chinese cities fell in May for the ninth straight month, the China Real Estate Index System, a private consultancy, said.

CHINESE PRESS

Jun 18 – China started to see people lining up overnight to buy homes in a project in the eastern city of Nanjing, which showed worries about a comeback in housing inflation. (China Economic Times)

Jun 13 – The chairman of the biggest developer in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, committed suicide as cooling property sales made him unable to repay estimated debt of more than 700 million yuan, some with high annual interest rates of 50-60 percent. (National Business Daily)

Jun 12 – Property projects enjoyed rising client volume after China cut interest rate on June 7 and some developers thus suspended price discounts. (Southern Metropolitan Daily)

THEY SAID

– “Some people, mainly local governments and developers, want China to relax property tightening measures and wish the market to rebound. But their hope must not be fulfilled. Otherwise, the Chinese economy will suffer big turbulance.” (He Keng, deputy head of the finance and economics committee at the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, told a forum in Beijing)

– “Local governments must support construction of ordinary homes, by lowering land prices. Credit policy also needs to be changed to give developers loans and at lower lending rates.” (Fan Jianping, a senior researcher at the State Information Centre, a top government think tank in Beijing)

($1 = 6.3651 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Langi Chiang and Ken Wills; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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