Beijing housing prices keep rising in August

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-09-15 13:17

Statistics released on Monday show an upward trend of real-estate trading in Beijing, the Beijing News reported.

About 103,000 units were purchased in the January-August period of this year, already surpassing the total purchase of 9,000 units last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

They say housing prices have been growing continuously for the past six months.

Prices in August are up 1 percent from the same period last year. Of which, the housing price of newly-built apartments increased by 2.1 percent from one year earlier, or 1.3 percent from the previous month.

The average price of the apartments within the fourth-ring road has exceeded 18,000 yuan ($2,636.05) per sq m. An official from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics had previously predicted that the excessively high housing prices may begin to cool as potential buyers try to wait out the real estate boom. He says the growth in prices is already beginning to slow down.

In the first eight months of this year, investment in property development in Beijing amounted to 147.84 billion yuan, up 44.2 percent from one year ago. In August, the investment reached 27.33 billion yuan, an increase of 300 percent from the same period last year.