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China's new home sales top records, expected to stay strong in 2014

By Cherry Cao | January 20, 2014, Monday | Online Edition

CHINA registered a booming housing market last year with new home sales seeing double-digit growth from 2012 by both value and volume, according to official data released today.

The value of new residential properties sold in 2013 jumped 26.6 percent from a year earlier to 6.77 trillion yuan (US$1.1 trillion), the National Bureau of Statistics said today on its website. By volume, new home purchases totaled 1.16 billion square meters across the country, a year-on-year rise of 17.5 percent.

"2013 was a record year for the country's residential property market with new home sales by value and volume both hitting historical highs," said Sky Xue, an analyst with China Real Estate Information Corp. "Pent-up demand from first-time buyers as well as upgraders was both robust during the past 12 months with first-tier cities leading price gainers."

Prices of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose for another month in China in December with 65 of the 70 cities tracked by the bureau recording increases from a month earlier, according to data released by the bureau on Saturday. Year-on-year, 69 cities registered price hikes, led by Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which advanced 21.9 percent, 20.6 percent, 20.4 percent and 20.3 percent, respectively, the bureau's data showed.

And the momentum will probably last for another year, industry analysts predicted.

"Residential prices in first-tier cities will continue to go up while those in second-tier cities may in general rise at a slower pace with mixed performances in different cities," said Helen Liu, general manager at Beijing Holdways Information and Technology Co. "From the policy aspect, I don't expect further cooling measures to be rolled out in the short term and the central government is likely to tackle the bubble problem by long-term radical cures such as implementing a property tax, increasing land supply and regulating bank loan policies to strengthen market mechanism."

New home starts across the country climbed 11.6 percent from a year earlier to 1.46 billion square meters and investment in residential property development, meanwhile, surged 19.4 percent annually to 5.9 trillion yuan last year, the bureau's data showed.

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