6 Key Statistics on China's 2011 Real Estate Market

China’s National Bureau of Statistics released its final data relating to the 2011 real estate market yesterday, showing that while China’s property market still grew during the year, there was a significant drop off in the volume of transactions and the growth rate of investment during the year.

In case you find yourself at a loss for conversation topics while sunning yourself on the beach or visiting your relatives over the Chinese New Year holiday, here are six key points from the bureau’s figures, courtesy of Bloomberg and AFP:

Overall property investment rose an annual 27.9 percent to RMB 6.17 trillion ($980 billion) in 2011, slowing from growth of 33.2 percent in 2010
Housing sales — excluding government subsidised homes — rose 12.1 percent to RMB 5.91 trillion last year, a slowdown from 18.9 percent growth in 2010.
Housing transactions climbed 10 percent to RMB 4.86 trillion ($770 billion), according to the National Bureau of Statistics today. Transactions in December totaled RMB 803.8 billion.
Investments in homes, office buildings, shopping malls and other types of real estate increased 28 percent to RMB 6.17 trillion last year, according to the data. A slowdown from 2010’s 33 percent gain.
New property construction climbed 16 percent to 1.9 billion square meters .
Home sales volume rose 3.9 percent last year from 2010 to 970.3 million square meters, according to the data.

The key data to examine, which these figures do not reveal is the direction and magnitude of the current market trend. It is clear that investment and transaction volume fell off most sharply during the fourth quarter of 2011, as financial tightening and other measure began to make their impact felt, but it would be good to see exactly what this curve looks like.

We can always hope that the National Bureau of Statistics comes out with some online business intelligence tools over the holiday break, but until then, this is the data we get.