Graft drives up housing prices

We should make public that expenditures on bribes are a key component of the housing price and make efforts to cut them off to lower down the housing price, says an article on the website www.china.com.cn. Following is an excerpt:

The way housing prices are set, deemed secret by local governments and developers, has recently been a hot topic in the media, but most people seem to forget a key factor - expenditures on bribery.

As an investigation conducted by a high-ranking official in 2005 showed, 50 percent of the housing price goes to land and construction costs; 20 percent to taxes collected by governments; and 30 percent to house developers.