Between January and August of 2007, China real estate development investment reached RMB 1.42 trillion, up 29%. Its growth rate was up 5 percentage points YoY, 2.3 percentage points higher than that of urban investment at the same period. The real estate investment occupied 20.4% of the urban investment, up 0.4 percentage points YoY. The growth of the housing investment began to speed up and the ratios of common commercial residential building and affordable housing increased. The completed investment in residential buildings in 2007 is up 30.9% YOY, up by 1.9 percentage points compared to the growth of the real estate investment at the same period, of which, the completed investment in the apartments of below 90 square meters occupied 20.8% of the total, up 1.3 percentage points over the first half of 2007, and the completed investment in affordable housing occupied 4.4% of the total, up 0.2 percentage points over the first half of 2007.

The structure of housing supply begins to improve, but the proportion of the apartments below 90 square meters is still relatively low. Statistics from 40 key cities show that the supply of the common commercial residential apartments below 90 square meters is rising month by month among newly-approved and newly-built residential buildings in those cities. As for the supply of approved pre-sale commercial residential buildings, the proportion of the apartments below 90 square meters (includes 90 square meters) increased from 34.39% in 2006 to 39.05% in Jan.-Aug. of 2007 and its area ratio increased from 21.16% to 24.37% at the same time, but it is still far away from the government goal. The average floor area of each approved pre-sale commercial residential apartment dropped from 122.3 square meters in July of 2007 to 106.95 square meters between January and August of 2007, but the average floor area per commercial residential apartment available in the market up to the end of each month is still as big as 114.03 square meters.