Vanke Dec property sales up 142 percent – and more of Today’s China Real Estate Links | January 9, 2013

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

• China’s Vanke Dec property sales up 142 percent

  China Vanke Co Ltd, the country’s largest real estate developer by revenue, said its December sales soared 142 percent to 14.1 billion yuan ($2 billion).

  In a statement on Monday it also forecast robust sales in January as China’s property market shows signs of recovery. Vanke said its property sales for 2012 reached a record 141.2 billion yuan, up 16 percent from the previous year.

• China Average Residential Land Prices Up 7.4% in 2012

  Average residential land prices in 300 Chinese cities rose 7.4% last year, according to private data provider China Real Estate Index System, despite a nearly three-year campaign by the government to control property price levels amid widespread grumbling about high housing costs.

  Data released Tuesday showed the average land price for the 300 cities in China rose to 1,347 yuan ($216) per square meter, buoyed by an upturn in prices in the biggest urban centers in the second half of the year.

• Fire Guts Five-Storey Harbin Mall

  The fire started around 9 a.m. in the Guorun Home Textiles Shopping Mall in downtown Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. The fire consumed an area of 9,400 square meters over the course of three and a half hours before being stopped. Firefighters helped evacuate shoppers from the five-story building.

• Tricycle House in China Gives New Meaning to Mobile Home

  China has taken the concept of the mobile home to a whole new level. Beijing’s People’s Architecture Office and People’s Industrial Design Office have designed and built a mobile home so small that it can be folded up, accordion-style, and carted around on the back of a tricycle. The fact that housing has become unbelievably expensive in China is not new news by any stretch of the imagination, and residents of Beijing have been living in much smaller spaces for years now.

This list is updated daily, so tune in again tomorrow for more up to date information, or subscribe to our daily email news digest to get this delivered to your mailbox.