Jul 6, 2010
Minister: China property prices will fall before long
BEIJING: China’s property prices will fall within a few months as government steps to cool the real estate market bite, Land and Resources Minister Xu Shaoshi said.
China introduced a slew of measures in April, including higher downpayments and mortgage rates, to curb excessive real estate price rises, which the government sees as a threat to social stability.
“Property transactions have fallen now and prices have stagnated,” Xu told a meeting of ministry officials on Sunday in Dalian, a northeastern port city.
“In another quarter’s time or so, the property market will probably come to a full correction and prices will fall. But it’s hard to say to what extent they will fall,” Xinhua news agency and other domestic media quoted Xu as saying.
He added that China’s land market had cooled and Beijing would continue to build more affordable housing, which could pull down the average level of house prices. Nationwide, property prices rose 0.2% in May, leaving them 12.4% higher than a year earlier. The increases were smaller than in April. — Reuters
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