CHINA Vanke Co, the country's largest publicly traded real estate developer, increased property sales 72 percent in August to their highest this year. The result came as rising wages fueled gains in house prices, Bloomberg News reported.
The company agreed to sell 6.28 billion yuan (US$833 million) of apartments last month, up from 3.66 billion yuan in July, Vanke said in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday, without giving year-earlier figures. That surpassed the previous 2007 high of 5.66 billion yuan set in June.
Rising incomes and a shortage of new homes are pushing residential prices up at the fastest pace in almost two years.
Vanke last month said first-half profit rose 31 percent after prices for new homes in its key base of Shenzhen jumped 14 percent in June alone.
State-controlled Vanke, which has sold homes to more than 90,000 Chinese families over the past decade, plans to quadruple its share of the market to five percent in the next 10 to 15 years, according to company President Yu Liang.
Shares of Vanke fell 0.5 percent to 32.90 yuan as of 11:30am in Shenzhen yesterday. The stock has more than tripled this year.
Sales reached 29.8 billion yuan in the first eight months of this year, from apartments with a total floor area of 3.67 million square meters, the company said.
Vanke sold 705,000 square meters of apartments in August. Vanke last month also said it plans to raise 5.9 billion yuan selling bonds.