Ten government departments in south China's Guangdong Province are linking up for a
special campaign to bring order to the province's real estate
market.
The campaign, set to run through August next year, will involve
the government departments responsible for construction, land
resources, finance, auditing, State taxation, local taxation,
development and reform, pricing, industrial and commercial
administration and governmental administration supervision.
Corresponding departments in the province's 21 cities will also
take part in the campaign.
Lu Hongqing, an official with the Guangdong provincial
construction department, said the campaign's goal would be to
expose the tricks used by real estate developers when developing,
marketing and selling developments. The campaign will focus on
whether developers have illegally used land, deliberately changed
plans, released false advertisements, illegally hoarded apartments
for speculation, driven up prices, sold property that had yet to
pass official inspections or receive approval, dodged taxes or got
out of line pulling down old residences or relocating
residents.
The campaign will also look into whether government officials or
other public servants working with the real estate sector have
broken laws or otherwise misbehaved. A particular emphasis is to be
placed on whether they have abused power, ignored misconduct by
developers, refused to settle administrative procedures in time or
asked for or received bribes in their daily work with property
firms.
The campaign will also involve investigations into enterprises,
intermediary agencies and their staff responsible for pulling down
old residential buildings and removing residents to help
authorities determine whether they had deliberately tampered with
the appraised values of the targeted houses, misrepresented the
floor spaces or produced false mapping reports to property registry
departments.
Lu said the campaign would be divided into three phases. The
first phase will involve self-examinations by real estate
developers and give the public a chance to file complaints.
Officials in the province's 21 cities will then launch their own
investigations before the provincial departments examine a random
sampling.
"The province aims to set up a long-term mechanism to improve
the management of the real estate market using this campaign as the
basis," the official said.
He added that the campaign is expected to curb the rising house
prices, especially in big cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, while
still allowing the province's property market to develop.
"If measures are implemented by the book during the campaign,
the development of Guangdong's real estate market will definitely
be more orderly, and housing prices will probably fall," said Cai
Suisheng, secretary-general of the Guangdong provincial real estate
association.
"Potential home buyers in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and other Pearl
River Delta cities where property prices have surged so much will
certainly take a wait-and-see approach," he added.
Many people, especially those who have not yet bought homes in
the province, have applauded the provincial campaign.
Gao Weijie, an employee of an advertising company in Guangzhou,
told China Daily: "Housing prices in Guangzhou are unbearably high.
I hope rather than wish that the provincial government's campaign
will keep prices down."
"Both property developers and government officials, especially
those in charge of land resources, housing management and urban
planning, should be under closer scrutiny to minimize
under-the-table practices," Gao said.
The average price of housing in the province was 5,750 yuan
($740) per square meter in March, up 22.38 percent from a year ago.
April's figure is not yet available.
And the average price in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, was
about 7,600 yuan per square meter in April, compared with about
3,900 yuan per square meter in 2003.
(China Daily June 8, 2007)