Pre-owned house sales soar in rush to beat restrictions – and more of Today’s China Real Estate Links | March 13, 2013

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

• Pre-owned house sales soar in rush to beat restrictions

  Pre-owned home sales almost tripled in Beijing last week, following the latest moves by the State Council to control the property market.

  Figures released by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development showed a total of 9,400 apartments were sold and signed online last week (March 2-8), a 279.5 percent rise on the same period last year.

  On a monthly basis, the figures represented a 140.5 percent increase on the previous week.

• China’s Steel Production Surges to a Record High

  China’s steel output surged to a new high in February amid signs of pickup in the real-estate market, defying efforts by Chinese officials to curb capacity and streamline the loss-plagued industry.

  Crude steel output rose 9.8% in February to a record 2.21 million metric tons on a daily average basis, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. This broke the previous record of 2.05 million tons of crude steel produced daily in January, the bureau said. In December, daily average production reached just 1.86 million.

• Vancouver’s real estate market echoes Chinese economy

  Vancouver’s housing market fortunes closely mirror trends in the Chinese economy, according to an analysis by an economist with the Conference Board of Canada.

  Robin Wiebe says his number crunching has found that there are strong links between home sales, price growth and housing starts in Vancouver and the overall health of the economy in China.

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