Here is a look at the latest news, numbers and more from China's real estate market.
The property sector accounts for 13 percent of China's gross domestic product in 2011.
In response to soaring prices, Beijing has rolled out an array of measures since late 2009 to rein in property speculation and has won some success. House prices have fallen from record highs.
But China's vows to keep its property curbs in place have fuelled worries that they may further drag on an economy that is already cooling, and saddle with banks with more bad loans.
REUTERS NEWS
March 28 - Chinese developer Evergrande Real Estate said its 2011 net profit climbed 50 percent from a year earlier to 11.4 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) and will keep a sales target of 80 billion yuan for 2012.
March 20 - Guangzhou R&F said its 2011 net profit rose 11.3 percent to 4.8 billion yuan and set a sales target of 32 billion yuan for 2012.
DATA
- A central bank survey of 20,000 Chinese households in the first quarter showed 67.7 percent thought home prices were "unacceptably high," down from 72.9 percent in the previous quarter.
Only 14.1 percent of respondents planned to buy a home in the next three months, the lowest reading since 1999 in any quarter. High-income families and those living in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai were the least willing buyers.
CHINESE PRESS
March 30 - China's housing ministry is studying details to encourage private investors to fund public housing projects to fill a financing gap.(Economic Information Daily)
March 23 - In a public housing rental project in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, only 210 of 899 units were successfully rented out to low-income families. Some eligible families had given up their units due to high rental cost and the remote location of the apartments. (People's Daily)
March 23 - China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development tells local governments to publish monthly data for starts and completion of public housing. (ChinaSecurities Journal)
March 23 - China said expanding a property tax is part of its 2012 agenda for economic reforms. Analysts expect the tax, currently levied on luxury home owners in Shanghai and Chongqing, will be broadened to the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou. (Economic Information Daily)
March 21 - China is drafting a new regulation to better compensate farmers who lost their land and homes by giving them job training and employment, said sources directly involved in the matter at the Ministry of Land and Resources. (21st Century Business Herald)
March 20 - China's listed developers have sat on rising land reserves in the past two years, and 56 percent of them, including Evergrande Real Estate, Shimao Property and Greentown China, have land stocks big enough 10 years or more of development. (Caijing)
THEY SAID
- "It is hard to say when the trial property tax will be extended to other cities and which cities will be included in the scheme. But basically, we will sum up the experiences of Shanghai and Chongqing and draft a proposal to introduce the tax in other places." (Jia Kang, head of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science at the Ministry of Finance.)
- "Right now, property prices in some cities remain high and given the absence of home purchase restrictions in some second- and third-tier cities, property demand is still quite strong. Therefore, we must persist in our property policies."(Qi Ji, vice minister of housing and urban-rural development.) ($1 = 6.3060 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Aileen Wang and Langi Chiang; Editing by Kim Coghill)
SOURCE Reuters
