China

Tally may nail down vacancies rumors of empty homes

By Lu Chang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-03 14:03

Construction workers paint walls in a new residential community in Huaibei, Anhui province.Shan Shi / for China Daily

BEIJING - The upcoming national population census will help provide some information about empty flats in China, a senior official said, amid mounting complaints the government has failed to give a clear picture of vacant homes.

Ma Jiantang, chief of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said recently that though opinions differ on the definition of vacant homes and some residents may not be willing to reveal personal details, the government will still try to get more information on vacant houses through the census.

In an interview with China Daily last week, Xing Zhihong, deputy director of Beijing's population census unit, said the census has some questions related to housing, but it cannot provide an accurate vacancy rate.

"The population census aims at checking people's registrations and living conditions," Xing said.

For people who have been unhappy with the lack of official information on national vacancy rates, the census was viewed as a potential illuminating source.

Many experts have said vacant homes should be taxed to curb speculation because some speculators are hoarding a large number of properties to fuel prices.

As housing prices continue to soar in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, market concerns over vacancy rates have been rampant.

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The total area of unsold housing across the nation was 191.8 million square meters as of June 30, representing a 6.4 percent year-on-year increase, data released Aug 4 by the NBS showed.

A rumor that was published in a number of newspapers said that across China "in 660 cities, 65.4 million vacant housing units had zero consumption power over a recent six-month period".

This led many to theorize that China has enough empty homes for 200 million people. However, the State Grid Group has denied the rumored figures.

The absence of accurate figures has led many to investigate how many apartment buildings in China are empty.

Zhang Jinqiu and Meng Bin, two professors at Beijing Union University, conducted a survey on electricity consumption in more than 50 residential areas sold between 2004 and 2006 in Beijing. They discovered that 27.2 percent of electricity meters in apartment buildings didn't register any usage in 2007.

The survey, which doesn't include unsold properties, was based on a two-month investigation in the scorching summer, Zhang said. If the consumption for a common house was less than 10 kilowatts-hours, it was considered empty.

Other direct methods by the two, such as reading water meters and counting unlighted rooms in the evening, have also provided similar results.

Feng Ke, director of the Research Center of Financial Properties at Peking University, said complicated methods are not needed to determine vacancy rates, which can be roughly estimated by reading meters from water and electricity companies.

"It is only a matter of time before a housing survey is conducted, since there are no reliable figures to reflect a more realist picture of the real estate sector," Feng said.

"Without accurate figures, the government will not be able to know about how to make a policy."

Beijing's Chaoyang district government recently released housing vacancy figures, the first of its kind in China, saying that 1.33 million sq m of residential space in the district are vacant. And over half of the space has been empty for at least three years.

But it did not explain how the survey was conducted, and failed to make the distinction between unsold housing and unoccupied homes after sales.

China Daily