China Real Estate Wrap for the Week of 6 August 2010

August 6 – At least half of China's existing residential properties will be demolished and rebuilt in 15 years, argued Chen Wei, director of the China Urban and Rural Construction and Economic Development Research Institute. He noted that the residences built between 1979 and 1999 are of the best quality in the country.

August 5 – Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Mapletree raised a $1 billion fund targeting the commercial real estate sector of China's first tier cities.

August 4 – Sales of commercial real estate in Shanghai totaled more than two million m2 at ¥15,426/m2 ($1 = ¥6.8) in 1H 2010, up 10% and 11% year on year respectively, according to Youwin.com.cn.

August 4 – Home sales in Shanghai totaled 8.4 million m2 in 1H 2010, down 41.8% from 1H 2009, according to the city's housing fund center. The number of homebuyers who took out mortgage loans decreased 20.1%, while the amount of the loans was down 21.3%.

August 4 – There were 190 million plus m2 of properties available for sale as of June 2010, up 6.4% compared to a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

August 4 – New home sales in Tianjin totaled 629,000m2 at ¥9,566/m2 in July, up 24.7% and 6.8% on the previous month, according to the local land authority.

August 3 – 510,000m2 and 430,000m2 of residential properties were supplied and sold in Shanghai in July, both almost unchanged compared to June, according to Ffang1996.com.

August 2 – Shanghai was first in the July home price rankings with ¥23,883/m2, followed by Shenzhen and Beijing, both of which over 20,000/m2, according to the China Real Estate Index Research System. The price for the top 10 cities averaged ¥15,250/m2.

August 2 – Land auctions for residential purpose in Beijing sold 303,000m2 at ¥8,445/m2 in July, according to China Realty Research Center. The average price was down 12.5% from June.

August 2 – Property sales in Sanya, a tourist attraction of Hainan province, totaled 92 units fetching ¥220 million in July, according to the local real estate website. The figures for June were 230 and ¥447 million respectively.

August 2 – ¥3.3 billion in real estate loans had gone bad in Shenzhen as of the end of June, ¥277 million less than in the beginning of 2010. The non-performing loan ratio reduced to 0.62% from 0.75%, Xinhua reported.

August 1 – New home prices in the 12 downtown districts of Guangdong provincial capital Guangzhou averaged ¥10,386/m2 in July, down 6.2% from the preceding month, according to the local land administration.

August 1 – New home prices in Shenzhen averaged ¥18,179/m2 in July, up 24.1% from a year ago and 1.6% from a month ago, according to the local land authority. Some 142,000m2 in floor space were sold in July, down 80.1% from a year ago and 6.8% from a month ago.

August 1 – China's first tier cities will see their property prices fall 20%-30% in 2H 2010, argued UBS Asia Real Estate chief Wang Zhenyu.

July 31 – Supply of residential space across China rocketed 135% to 56,000 hectares in 1H 2010 compared to 1H 2009, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources.