Shimao Property

China-focused developer Shimao Property expects the country’s ailing property sector to pick up in the first quarter next year as homebuyers return to the market, and said it is confident of meeting its annual sales target thanks to moves by Beijing to stimulate demand.

Hui Wingmau, the chairman, said, ‘The measures will help lead to a healthy and stable development of the property sector, and aid home buyers to regain confidence. Homebuyers who are now staying on the sidelines will eventually return to the market. We will be able to see a recovery in the coming spring.’

The group’s property sales totalled RMB10 billion ($1.47-billion) for the first 10 months of the year, against a full-year target of RMB14 billion. Hui Wingmau said, ‘We are doing a lot of work to catch up with our target. We are confident that we can meet the target.’

Last month, Shimao said property sales totalled RMB8.3-billion for the first nine months of 2008, up 21.3% from the same period a year ago, thanks to contributions from its projects in Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Hangzhou. Its biggest rival, China Vanke, China’s largest listed property developer, has reported a drop in property sales.
Source: Financial Post Canada

Poly Real Estate in Shanghai

Poly Real Estate Group , China’s second largest developer by market value, property sales in the first ten months of this year amounted to RMB 16.74 billion, up 18.58% from a year earlier.

It has sold a total of 2.10 million square meters in the first ten months of this year, up 24.3% compared with the same period of last year.

In October alone, the company sold 344,400 square meters of properties, with sales revenue surging to RMB2.58 billion from RMB 2.1 billion in the same period of the previous year.

So far, Poly has entered 18 Chinese cities after it started to sell property buildings in Hangzhou, Tianjin and Chengdu.

From January to September 2008, the company realized property sales of RMB 14.15 billion, up 17.95% from a year earlier, sources reported.
Source: HKTDC

Sam Zell

Equity International, the private equity real estate firm co-founded by Sam Zell and Gary Garrabrant, has acquired its third company in China. Yupei develops, owns and manages industrial, warehousing and logistics properties. Price was $46 million.

Gary Garrabrant

The Chicago-based private equity real estate firm  said it closed the deal with the private Shanghai Yupei Company which currently has five properties in four cities across China, comprising approximately 350,000 square meters. The deal marks Equity International’s third portfolio company in China.

Gary Garrabrant said there was increasing demand for new warehouses in China, driven in part by the obsolence of old stock and a lack of suitable space. He said the growth in domestic consumption would fuel this further adding there were ‘powerful fundamentals’ for the sector.
Source: Private Equity Real Estate

Property in China

China Information News, citing the National Bureau of Statistics, said, national property investment totaled RMB2.39 trillion ($349.75 billion) during the January-October period, up 24.6% year-on-year, while the growth rate was 1.9 percentage points lower than the first three quarters.

Investment for commercial residential housing amounted to RMB1.75 billion, up 27.4% year-on-year and accounted for 73.1% of the total property investment. Yet the growth rate was 1.3 percentage points lower than that by the end of October.

Some 2.48 billion square meters of housing was under construction
during this period, up 18.7% from the same period last
year. Property developers purchased 300 million square meters of
land nationwide, down 5.6% year-on-year and completed construction on 190 million square meters, down 2.5% year-on-year.

More HERE.
Source: China Daily

China real estate exhibition

The government has announced a reduction in required down payments and a waiver on stamp taxes for property deals. But most enabling regulations and full details have yet to be released.

For those buying their first home, the minimum down payment was cut to 20% from 30%, and banks were allowed to charge as little as 70% of the central bank base lending rates for such mortgages.

The central government gave commercial banks freedom to decide their own mortgage rates, ranging from 5.04% to 7.2%. But among the four major commercial banks, Agricultural Bank of China was the only one that had published its lending rate as of Monday.

Chinese banks are mostly state-owned commercial banks, which have been less affected by the global financial crisis. Most lent cautiously to the more credit-worthy borrowers.

Analysts said banks were struggling to keep a balance between attracting borrowers and maintaining profit margins.

Guo Tianyong, a banking expert at the China Central Finance and Economics University, said, ‘As mortgage lending is shrinking, each commercial bank is waiting for others to announce the rates first, so they can try to compete with an even lower rate. Banks and buyers may need to wait for a long time.’

Beijing authorities, and those in other cities, said they needed more time to figure out who could get tax breaks and wouldn’t have a plan ready to announce until the end of this year.
More HERE.
Source: China View