Chinese first-tier cities' land-sale prices in the first five months soared to 4.5 times that of the same period of last year.

According to Centaline, a national property brokerage, land transfer fees owned by governments of China's four first-tier cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen — in the first five months of this year hit 141.18 billion yuan ($23.02 billion). The figure last year was just 31.44 billion yuan.

In the past week, "land kings", or developers buying land at record high prices, have emerged frequently in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

For example, a developer bought a parcel of land in Tongzhou, a suburb district in Beijing, last Thursday with 1.04 billion yuan, or 13,601 yuan per square meter. Just a month ago, the land price is this area was no more than 6,000 yuan per square meter.

Fan Xiaochong, president of Sunshine 100, a property developer, said that developers, buoyed by a positive outlook, have been busy buying land, boosting land-sale prices. They are bullish about the property market in first-tier cities while bearish about lower-level cities. As a result, land prices in first-tier cities skyrocketed while remaining stable in smaller cities.