January 17, Investment in China’s property sector grew at a slower pace in 2011 than a year earlier on economic woes and a slowdown in the real estate market triggered by the government’s efforts to cool prices.

Investment in China’s property sector rose 27.9% year-on-year in 2011 to RMB 6.17 trillion ($972 billion), Ma Jiantang, chief of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

Annual growth in 2010 was 33.2%.

New property construction climbed 16.2% from a year earlier to 1.9 billion square meters, substantially down from growth of 40.6% in 2010, as property developers eased the pace or halted construction at some projects due to a shortage of cash and an oversupply of commercial residential units.

Housing sales volume for the whole of 2011 totaled 970.3 million square meters, up 3.9% y-o-y but down from an 8.3% pace of expansion in 2010, according to the NBS.

Grim Outlook

The outlook for the domestic property market is grim this year, as the central government has pledged to maintain its property curbs and the mayors of Beijing and Shanghai last week both expressed a firm determination to control home prices in their respective cities.

Chen Jingsong, chairman of Shenzhen World Union Property Consultancy, expects a “recession era” in China’s property market to last until the second half of 2012, “by which time signs of a recovery may appear”.

“The scenario is going to be very complicated this year, and it’s hard to tell if our developers will be able to recover from the sluggish [conditions],” Chen was quoted as saying by Chinese news portal NetEase.

Source:21cbh.com