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Ways to keep the roof on housing prices
By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-25 08:03
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A property tycoon has questioned the government's commitment to keeping a cap on rising property prices after it was revealed that the housing market is now responsible for half of the capital's GDP.
Ren Zhiqiang, chairman of Hua Yuan Real Estate Group, said he wondered about Beijing municipal government's sincerity in cooling the over-heated housing market.
"I saw on TV that even some migrant workers in Tianjin and Guangdong can afford a house, so why can't you? The government should be responsible for the high housing price," Ren said.
"The government does not plan to cut the cost of land to provide cheaper apartments to low-income families. Instead, it wants to force real estate developers to build affordable houses."
Ren said he wondered whether policy-makers really understood the difference between affordable housing and commercial housing.
"Beijing's population will keep growing. The annual GDP per capita has reached $10,000," he said, "But the city is not ready to provide suitable residences to different social groups."
Housing development was one of the major issues during the third session of the 11th Beijing municipal committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which began on Saturday.
In 2009, the hot housing market contributed 50 percent to the capital's annual GDP, according to a report from the opening meeting of CPPCC on Saturday.
Beijing's municipal commission of housing and urban-rural development said 2,500 hectares of land will be released into the real-estate market in 2010, enough for 134,000 apartments. About half of those - some 74,000 units - will be reserved for low-income households.
"Beijing needs to prevent the formation of slum areas," added Mao Daqing, general manager of Vanke Beijing.
Mao urged the municipal government to focus on the "ant tribe", a reference to the thousands of low-income and often jobless college graduates living in Beijing.
"The government needs not only to build more affordable or cheap-rent houses for people like them, but also to care about their living standards and prevent the formation of slums," Mao said.
Liu Huan, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics, said yesterday property tax may be the answer.
"Personally, like many people, I don't like tax, but it is necessary and the time is now ripe to put property tax into practice in Beijing," he said.
