Surge in China Property Prices Highlight Policy Challenges – Today’s China Real Estate Links | November 19, 2013

Here is a list of the day’s latest China real estate news collected from around the web:

• Surge in China property prices highlight policy challenges

  China’s plans to stabilise its runaway property market face a stiff challenge after home prices surged to fresh record highs in October, with the measures likely to take a few years to have their desired impact.

  Home prices in large Chinese cities have continued to set records despite a four-year long government campaign to cool the market, adding to the threat of a price bubble and social unrest as housing becomes increasingly unaffordable.

  Responding to these concerns, the leadership pledged to push forward property tax legislation and allow farmers to sell their land more freely as part of its boldest set of economic and social reforms in nearly three decades.

• China’s Celebrities Have a Taste for Real Estate

  Owning a sizeable fortune is not a problem for big names in the entertainment sector in China, but keeping fortunes from depreciating is another matter. At present, the most common method used by rich entertainers to manage money is to invest in the real estate sector.

  Property prices in first-tier cities on the mainland have rarely fallen over the past decade, said a market source. Investors in the property sector in these cities have seen good returns, following in the footsteps of renowned figures in the entertainment sector and their investments in the real estate business.

• China to test farmers’ right to transfer land

  An eastern Chinese region is experimenting with letting farmers mortgage or transfer control of their publicly owned land, in what could help spread prosperity to the impoverished countryside and become one of China’s most pivotal rural land reforms in 35 years.

  There is no private land ownership in China, with all urban land under state ownership and rural land under collective ownership overseen by village officials. That wouldn’t change in Anhui province, where the latest experiment is under way.

• ‘Golden visas’ draw foreign buyers to Iberian real estate

  When Edward Hu bought a holiday home in Portugal’s most popular tourist spot in September, the Chinese agricultural entrepreneur got a Europe-wide family travel permit thrown in for as long as he owns it.

  “It’s one of the biggest advantages of investing in Portugal,” says Hu, 33, from Chengdu in southwest China, who paid 560,000 euros ($750,700) for a semi-detached property near the beach in the southern Algarve.

  The beaches were once enough to lure buyers to southern Europe. A shattering economic crisis later, Spain and Portugal are trying to resurrect their moribund property markets by offering “golden” residence permits to home buyers from outside the European Union.

This list is updated daily, so tune in again tomorrow for more up to date information.

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