Vacant apartment space in China dropped 9.3 percent to 60.29 million square meters by August from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said today.

Vacant properties refer to those that have been up for sale for more than a year but still unsold or not rented.

The country had 119 million square meters of vacant property, including apartments and commercial properties and offices, by last month, down two percent from the same period a year earlier, the bureau said.

Real estate developers across the country invested 2.2 trillion yuan (US$293 billion) from January to August, a 35.1 percent increase from a year earlier, the bureau said.

Over the past eight months, 1.9 billion square meters of properties were under construction, up 22.7 percent from last year, including 1.5 billion square meters of residential space, the bureau said.

China's real estate climate index, which reflects current trends in the property market, reached 104.48 points in August, 0.48 point higher than July and 1.17 points higher from a year earlier, the bureau said.

The index has six sub-indices - property development, capital source, the area of land developed, average sale prices of marketable buildings, the floor space of marketable but unsold buildings and the floor space of buildings under construction.

China has tightened credit to developers, increased supervision over land use and improved enforcement of tax policies to cool down the real estate boom since last year.

(Shanghai Daily September 18, 2007)