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)
