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Eight Billion Square Meters Waiting for Developers
By 2010, there will be 8 billion square meters available to build homes in China. By that time, households with housing difficulties and the housing vacancy rate will not exceed 5% according to the latest estimates by Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of standing committee of National People's Congress and director of National Natural Science Funds.
According to his estimates, housing expenditure will be likely to account for 15% to 20% of the family income by 2010. China will provide housing subsidies for low-income families covering 10% to 20% of the China's families. Chen said that by 2010, houses owned by Chinese residents will account for 70% of all houses at the international symposium on real estates in Asia July 28.
Cheng Siwei made the calculation in this way: The urban population of China in 1997 was 369.9 million, if we assume that there are 3.19 people per family, the number of families will come out to about 120 million and the urbanization rate will be 30.1%. Suppose that by 2010, Chinese population is 1.4 billion, the urbanization rate is 40% and per capita housing area is 15 square meters, 8.4 billion square meters will be needed for housing. Subtracting the actual area of housing area at the end of 1997, 3.6 billion square meters, and taking the annual renovation rate into account, 8 billion square meters will be needed for housing to be built from 1998 to 2010.
The data provided by Ministry of Construction also show that from 1959 to 1999, 5.74 billion square meters of housing was complete. The per capita living area in Chinese urban areas has reached 9.8 square meters despite the increase in population.
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