Property prices still rising
By Li Fei (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-15 08:56
Property prices in China's major cities kept rising in May, one month before
the latest round of macro control measures were introduced, government figures
show.
Property prices in 70 large cities rose by 5.8 per cent
year-on-year, 0.7 percentage points higher than the growth rate in April,
according to a survey released yesterday by the National Development and Reform
Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics.
Prices for newly built
homes climbed 6.1 per cent last month from a year earlier, 0.3 percentage
points lower than the previous month, the statistics showed.
Residential
property prices in Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning
Province, climbed 15.2 per cent year-on-year in May, the highest increase among
the 70 cities surveyed.
Next came Shenzen, a booming city in South
China's Pearl River Delta region, which reported a 13.7 per cent year-on-year
increase in residential property prices.
Housing prices in Beijing rose
9 per cent year-on-year in May.
The statistics showed that six cities saw
residential housing prices falling in May from the previous month.
Shanghai witnessed the prices of apartments dropping by 6.2 per cent
compared with the same period last year.
"My sense is that the real price
rises are much higher than the reported figures," said Yi Xianrong, a researcher
with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a long critic of the property
market.
"But these figures do show the need for strong government
action," he said.
Effective from June 1, the minimum down payment for an
apartment larger than 90 square metres was raised from the previous 20 per cent
to 30 per cent.
The down payment ratio for apartments smaller than 90
square metres remained unchanged at 20 per cent.
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
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