ID :
188925
Thu, 06/16/2011 - 06:38
Auther :

China's housing transactions jump this year

China's housing transactions surged in the first five months of this year, a government report showed Thursday, despite the country's tightening moves to cool its economy.
The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said the total volume of transactions in the country's housing properties reached 1.33 trillion yuan (US$205 billion) in the January-May period, a 37.8 percent jump from a year earlier.
The growth in the property sector came amid a slew of measures issued by China to curb property speculation and cool excessive home price rises, including a limit on the number of units each family can buy and a maiden launch of the property tax.
In an aim to absorb the liquidity in the market, the central People's Bank of China raised the benchmark interest rate twice this year while increasing banks' required reserves six times in 2011.
Global credit appraiser Standard & Poor's Rating Services (S&P) downgraded its outlook on China's real estate development sector to negative from stable.
"Property sales were satisfactory for many rated (Chinese developers) in the first five months of this year, but we expect the sales momentum to slow as policy tightening starts to bite," said Bei Fu, credit analyst at S&P.
"We expect meaningful price adjustments in the second half of 2011. If sales volumes remain sluggish, developers' liquidity will quickly dry up, suggesting sporadic price discounting will likely intensify."
S&P added it believes that the soaring property market in Hong Kong may be at risk of a sharp correction. The soaring demand in Hong Kong's housing market was largely attributed to a massive influx of buyers from mainland China.

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