Housing Industry Surges to Sixteen Month High in AprilThe index of real estate development in China surged to a 16-month high in April as land development and newly completed houses increased rapidly.According to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Wednesday, the composite index of the real estate sector climbed 0.73 points over March to 106.88 points in April, 5. 03 points higher than a year earlier. The NBS figures show that land development increased by 61.5 percent year-on-year to 18.87 million square meters during January- April, compared with a growth of merely 5.6 percent in the same period of last year. Coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Shandong and Zhejiang led the country's growth by developing more than two million square meters of land each during the period. In contrast to the lop-sided growth in previous years, the real estate sector saw simultaneous growth of both newly started and newly completed houses over the first four months of the year. A total of 25.86 million square meters of houses were newly completed during the period, registering a year-on-year growth of 34.4 percent as compared with a growth of 10.3 percent in January- April last year. Funding for real estate development totaled 178.8 billion yuan in the previous four months, while the actual investment made was 105.7 billion yuan. Stockpiles of completed buildings that remained unsold grew at a rate of 4 percent during the period, compared with a growth of 18.3 percent a year earlier. The NBS said that thanks to strict government measures to limit the growth of housing inventories, the stockpile of unsold buildings has seen a diminishing growth rate since the latter half of last year. The average prices of marketable buildings were around 2,344 yuan per square meter during January-April, 11.7 percent higher than in the same period of last year. The growth rate was 1.6 percentage points lower than that in the first three months of the year. |
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