Property Report Asia states an investigation of 7,136 major real estate enterprises shows that:

57.2% of enterprises surveyed saw profit in the first half of this year unchanged from the same period of 2007.
39.3% predict their profit in the latter half of this year will remain the same as in the first half.
49.1% of real estate enterprises say their newly constructed area since this year was equal to the level in the same period of 2007.
40.4% say the area dropped.
0.5% say the area increased.

Prospects in the latter half:

50.1% hold that house sales in the latter half will drop by 5-10% year on year.
39% believe that sales will maintain the level of the year beforel.
10.9% hold it will increase.

The investigation shows that half of the 7,136 enterprises surveyed predict drops in sales in the second half, half believe the economic profit will not deteriorate in the same period.
Source: Property Report Asia

According to China Central Television (CCTV) China’s central government will promote the healthy development of the nation’s capital market and maintain the stability of the country’s property sector to prevent possible financial risks.

At a central government meeting attended by President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, the central government vowed to take all possible measures to curb the country’s excessive inflation.

It allowed the country needs to improve its macro-economic controls and boost the production of necessities including grain, edible oil and meat.

Chiming in, the central bank said the country is to take effective measures to prevent prices from rising too rapidly and guard against big fluctuations in asset prices.

Now a slight internal contradiction.

The consumer price index climbed 7.7% year-on-year in May. While that was down from the 8.5% rise in April, it was still well above the government’s target.

This has affected the stock market. The Shanghai stock index fell 14% in a week as investors focused on rising global oil prices and tighter domestic monetary policy by the central bank.
Source: Forbes

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has announced that property prices in 70 large and mid-sized Chinese cities rose 11% year-on-year in the first quarter.

The price rise is 0.8 percentage points higher than that in the previous quarter.

Prices of new apartments jumped 11.8%, down 0.4 percentage points from the same quarter last year, while prices of second-hand flats rose 11.5%, up 1.7 percentage points.

Prices of new non-residential properties were up 7%, 0.3 percentage points higher than the same quarter of last year, while those of second-hand non-residential properties rose by 8.9%, up 2.1 percentage points.

Prices of new properties in mid-sized cities rose faster in March than that of big cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, which saw faster price rises in the 2006-2007 period.

Urumqi, capital of the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, continued to top the growth list with a 25.3% increase in March. It was followed by Haikou and Ningbo, which saw property prices rose 18.3% and 18.2%, respectively.

Beijing reported a 16.9% hike in prices of new properties in the previous month.

In contrast, prices of new homes in Shenzhen, a southern city bordering Hong Kong, and Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, fell 4.9% and 0.8%, respectively, from the previous month.
Source: China View

Shanghai’s real estate agents are keeping prices high despite talk of a property slowdown. As a result buyers are not responding to the offers.

The central bank’s first-quarter survey of residents in 50 Chinese cities shows that only 14.6% plan to buy homes in the next quarter, down 1.3% from last quarter and a 1.9% drop year-on-year.

Of the seven big cities surveyed, Shanghai saw the most distinct fall in homebuyers for the next quarter, down to a record 4.3%.

However, there are signs the market could be about to warm up again.

According to the China Real Estate Index System, 5,260 commercial apartments were sold in Shanghai from Mar 17 to 23, up 14.37% on the previous week, and the sixth consecutive weekly rise.

Zhang Qi, an analyst at the China Real Estate Index System, said ‘Property prices in Shanghai have shown signs of recovery this month, as huge demand still exists in the city.’
Source: China Daily

There is almost no commodity more suited to the Internet than private real estate. There is almost no area of the Internet which more threatens newspapers and magazines. The ability to be able to search by area, size, price what ever and then see pictures of the property — with video coming along very quickly — means that property hunting becomes a pleasure instead of a dreary trudge through newspaper columns.

Chinese leading Internet portals like SINA, NetEase.com and Baidu.com have successively started moving into the online real estate field.

SINA announced in February that it would spin off its real estate and home decoration channels to set up a joint venture with real estate service provider E-House.

The joint venture will operate SINA’s real estate and home decoration channels and will team up with E-House China to explore new revenue modes. Basically this will be done through a proprietary real estate information database and analysis system, China Real Estate Information Circle system, which contains transaction data on land, residences, offices, as well as commercial buildings in 30 major cities in the country.

NetEase is doing something similar. It has established a strategic partnership with Nettop.cn on real estate and home decoration online advertising segments.

Nettop will be responsible for the content construction and advertising operation of NetEase’s real estate and home decoration channels.

Baidu announced in February that it, too, was moving into the area of real estate online advertising.

When it comes to buying propery Internet users, which is biased towards 25- to 35-year old users, are a strong potential house buying group.

Real estate online advertising has been leaping in recent years. From January to October 2007 it increased at a pace of 65.4%. And it does not seem to be slowing down.
Source: Trading Markets