Surging house prices in China's economic hub Shanghai are unlikely to cool anytime soon and may post a 30-percent growth rate this year, state press reported yesterday.
The Shanghai Housing Index, the benchmark for the city's new housing prices, increased 2.5 percent last month to hit 1,038 points, various state media reported.
For the first nine months of the year prices surged a total of 23 percent, which compares with annual 15.5 percent growth last year, the Shanghai Daily said.
Based on the data, the index office raised its forecast for the annual growth rate to 30 percent from 25 percent in August, indicating average prices would rise to about 5,900 yuan a square meter (US$719) by year-end.
By the end of last year, the average new housing price was 4,553 yuan (US$549) a square meter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
"The large increase indicated strong demand for property investment, particularly in the high-end residential projects priced above 8,000 yuan per square meter," the newspaper quoted He Xiaocheng, an analyst at the Shanghai Real Estate Index Office, as saying.
Vacant housing decreased 30.9 percent to 926,800m2 in the same period to last month.
A total of 16.09 million square meters were sold during the period, while 16.08 million square meters of projects were completed.
The ministry of construction has launched an investigation into China's real-estate industry on worries that a bubble looms in the fast-growing sector.
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