Tag Archives: china
China Property Digest: Home Prices Keep Rising Despite New Curbs
BEIJING | Wed May 22, 2013 4:19am EDT May 22 (Reuters) – China’s home prices are still on the rise despite stricter measures by the central government and major cities in the past few weeks to calm frothy real estate market. The rise fuelled expectations that China could adopt further cooling steps, particularly the widening out of property tax on home owners. Property investment accounted for 11 percent of China’s gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2013. Here is a look at the latest news, numbers and more from China’s real estate market. REUTERS NEWS MAY 18 – China’s housing inflation accelerated to its fastest pace in April in two years, driven by a jump in prices in Beijing and Shanghai, complicating the task of policymakers trying to cool the property sector while supporting economic expansion. MAY 13 – Growth in real estate investment in China quickened in the first four months as developers saw improved liquidity conditions, though property sales slowed slightly due to continuing government curbs. MAY 10 – As central banks print cash to boost moribund economies, investors in Asia wanting to hedge against rising prices are dumping gold and doubling down on property. MAY 6 – China Vanke, the country’s largest real estate developer, said it sold 12.4 billion yuan ($2 billion) of property in April, up 67.6 percent from a year earlier. MAY 2 – Average home prices in China’s 100 biggest cities rose in April from the previous month, the eleventh straight month-on-month rise, a private survey showed, raising the risk of further tightening steps despite recent government measures to crack down on speculation. APR 25 – China should expand property ownership taxes to more cities instead of imposing a 20 percent capital gains tax on transactions if it wants to prevent a steep rebound in home prices this year, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top state think-tank said. DATA Beijing’s property sales reached 5.6 million square meters in the first four months of 2013, up 71 percent from the same period last year, according to data from Beijing Bureau of Statistics. China’s central government will allocate 66 billion yuan to local governments to help build public housing for rent this year, the Ministry of Finance said. Existing home sales in Beijing plunged to 5,212 units in April, slumping 88 percent from the previous month and dropping 48 percent from a year ago, according to data from local property brokerage Home Link. Land sales in China’s 53 major cities rose 3 percent in April from a year ago and were down 11 percent from March, data from a private consultancy CRIC showed. CHINESE PRESS MAY 22 – About 30 Chinese developers have raised almost 80 billion yuan so far this year from overseas to support expansion. (Securities Daily) MAY 13 – China should gradually rely on market forces to control the housing market as the current administrative curbing measures could not change market sentiments on rising home prices, the newspaper said in a commentary.(People’s Daily) MAY 12 – China’s government is studying a long-term policy system to control the housing market , which is expected by analysts to improve its way of regulating the market and replace current home purchases restrictions. (Xinhua) THEY SAID — “Considering the special position of property industry in the economy , the policymakers will treat the market more reasonably and cautiously.”(Li Daokui, former academic adviser of the People’s Bank of China). — “Expectations on home price rises have not waned yet. China’s property tightening campaign is still at its critical moment and the country needs to reinforce implementations of cooling measures.” (Liu Jianwei, senior statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics, said in a statement accompanying the release of April home price data) (Reporting By Xiaoyi Shao and Kevin Yao; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu) Continue reading
Chinese Shopping Malls To Become Hottest Investment Property: ARA
Total number of mainland malls expected to jump 40 per cent to more than 4,000 by 2015. Wednesday, 22 May, 2013 [UPDATED: 5:09PM] [font=’Arial Black’, ‘, Arial, Helvetica, ‘, ‘Nimbus Sans L’, ‘, sans-serif} ‘] jeanny.yu@scmp.com [/font] Malls like Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong will be the benchmark for ARA Private Funds, which wants to invest in malls that can service China’s rapidly growing middle class. Photo: SCMP Shopping malls will surpass office and residential space as the most profitable type of property investment in China over the next two to five years, thanks to the nation’s booming middle class and its fast-growing income, says a property investment firm partly owned by Asia’s richest man, tycoon Li Ka-shing. “District shopping centres with a gross floor area of 1 million square feet or bigger, and a high footfall will offer the biggest upside with limited risks for private funds in the coming years in the mainland,” said Ng Beng Tiong, ARA Private Funds chief executive. Ng, a former investment banker, is targeting an internal rate of return of 20 per cent by building and operating shopping malls in the mainland through the newly-raised US$441 million Asia Dragon Fund II. HSBC forecasts that another 93 million Chinese households will join the middle class by 2015, while the China Chain Store and Franchise Association separately expects the number of mainland malls to jump 40 per cent to more than 4,000 by 2015. However, not all of these new malls will provide decent returns, so real estate funds will have to be highly selective, Ng said, warning that the presence of luxury brands did not guarantee fat margins. “We don’t go for malls that are full of Guccis and LVs (LVMH luxury goods), but (for) the ones that serve the daily needs of a large catchment of residents and office workers,” Ng said, citing its Asia Dragon Fund I’s Dalian shopping mall and the Festival Walk in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Tong as references. Of the two private funds closed last year, Ng plans to invest up to 70 per cent of the US$441 million Asia Dragon Fund II in China, of which over a half would go to shopping malls that serve the growing middle class. “It is the middle income group that is growing faster in terms of their wealth and buying power, which translates into a very strong fundamental support for shopping malls”, he said. The firm, in which Cheung Kong holds a 14 per cent stake, is looking to expand its footprint to key tier-two cities, such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu and Wuhan. It already had projects underway in Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian and Nanjing, he said. By 2015, the retail market would double in China’s key tier-two cities, according to HSBC research, and shopping malls would account for 74 per cent of the retail market in these cities, up from 51 per cent currently. Singapore-based ARA managed around S$22.1 billion (US$17.6 billion) of assets as of the end of last year, according to its annual report. The company is an affiliate of the Cheung Kong Group and apart from its private fund business, it also runs some of Asia’s most popular REITS (real estate investment trust), including Hui Xian REIT and Fortune REIT. Continue reading
China ‘Will Not Accept’ Carbon Tax On EU Flights: Report
Sunday, 19.05.2013, 11:58 ©AFP China will not pay for CO2 emissions by its airlines on flights within Europe, a top civil aviation official reportedly said after the European Commission warned eight Chinese firms face fines for nonpayment. The world’s second largest economy “will not accept any unilateral and compulsory market measures”, Yan Mingchi, deputy director-general of the legal and regulation department at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told an aviation forum in Beijing Friday, the China Daily newspaper reported. He said “airlines in developing countries should be provided with financial and technological support in their efforts at coping with the effects of climate change”. The European Commission said Friday eight Chinese and two Indian airlines face fines totalling 2.4 million euros ($3.1 million) for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions on flights within the bloc. It said member states could fine the firms, including Chinese flag carrier Air China, under the terms of the EU’s Emissions Trading System, which is designed to cut the carbon dioxide pollution blamed for global warming. In a highly controversial move last year, the EU added airlines to the ETS regime, sparking howls of protest from the United States and China, which said the move breached international law. The EC said almost all airlines had fully complied with their ETS obligations, which were consistent with international law and conventions. However it said eight Chinese carriers, including China Airlines, China Eastern and China Southern, alongside Air India and India’s Jet Airways were at fault. The eight Chinese airlines were liable for fines of some 2.4 million euros combined while the two Indian groups owed much less, at 30,000 euros. For more information see: http://en.tengrinews.kz/markets/China-will-not-accept-carbon-tax-on-EU-flights-report–19481/ Use of the Tengrinews English materials must be accompanied by a hyperlink to en.Tengrinews.kz Continue reading
