July 28 – Shanghai will supply public rental housing and will begin construction on a large number of price-limited commercial properties, reports stcn.com, citing Mayor Han Zheng. Han admits the city faces great difficulty building public rental housing and said that an innovative scheme to build affordable housing is in the pipeline.

Han says Shanghai will relax standards for affordable rental homes in a bid to increase the number of people who would benefit from it. The city will launch a second round of bidding for housing with common properties, with standards loosened further in January 2012. The mayor believes this will ease pressure on highly skilled, young workers in China’s most populous city.

In the second half of 2011, Shanghai will begin construction on price-limited commercial properties in Pudong district and trial housing in three industrial parks in which residents can first rent a property and choose to purchase it later.

For the first half of 2011, Shanghai began construction on 7.53 million square meters of affordable housing, or approximately 100,000 units.

At present, Shanghai posted a dip in transaction prices of commercial properties, with a slower increase in the housing index.

Supplies of residential properties rose while transaction area fell marginally in the wealthy metropolis.

In June, the average transaction price of newly built residential properties fell 7.4 percent from January, while the average transaction price of existing homes fell 3.1 percent.

Shares of China Vanke (000002) fell 0.37 percent to trade at 8.11 at 13:28 today.