Housing News
- Housing prices up 7.1% in major cities
Date: 25-Jul-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
HOUSING prices in 70 large- and medium-sized cities in China continued to rise in June, up 7.1 percent over the same period last year.
Last month, the prices of newly built commercial housing units were up 7.4 percent year on year, according to figures released Monday by the National Development and Reform Commission in cooperation with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The cities include Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.
The prices of low-cost housing rose 1.4 percent and the prices of expensive housing went up 8.5 percent. The cities of Beihai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Beijing and Shijiazhuang reported higher-than-average price hikes, the commission said. Housing prices in Shenzhen were up 13.9 percent and those in Beihai went up 15.5 percent.
Prices of pre-owned houses in the cities were up 7.8 percent last month over the same period last year and 1 percent higher than the previous month.
Rising housing prices have been a major bugbear for Chinese people in recent years as new homes are too expensive for most urban residents. Speculation by domestic and overseas investors has been blamed as one of the reasons for the price hikes.
The government is keen to tame the property market as it has sparked grave public concern over housing security and is fueling the fast expansion of investment and bank lending.
China's real estate investment soared 28.5 percent from a year earlier to 988.7 billion yuan (US$130.6 billion) in the first half of 2007, according to the NBS.
The growth was 1.6 percentage points higher than the first quarter and 4.3 percentage points higher than the same period last year, said the NBS.
Analysts attributed the rising investment to booming housing demand, excessive liquidity and robust housing price hikes.
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