Signed reports about corruption rise in Shanghai – and more of today’s China Real Estate Links | June 26, 2013

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

• Signed reports about corruption rise in Shanghai

  Shanghai prosecuting agencies confirmed a continued rising trend of signed reports from the public in the past 12 months concerning abuses of power.

  “We received a total of 1,872 reports of abuses of power through mail, phone calls and online channels from June 2012 to May this year, and the proportion of signed reports has continued rising in the past three years,” Jin Hong, a spokeswoman for the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate, told China Daily on Monday.

• Shanghai June new home sales may top 1 mil sqm

  New home sales in Shanghai last week rose to a nearly three-month high and the unexpected surge may push June’s overall volume above 1 million square meters for the third time this year.

  The purchases of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, jumped 48.4 percent from the previous week to 338,000 square meters during the seven-day period ended Sunday, the highest weekly volume registered since April, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said yesterday in a report.

• China’s ‘Shadow Banks’ Fan Debt-Bubble Fears

  In a 52-story office tower overlooking the leafy streets of this city’s embassy district, some 400 deal makers at Citic Trust Co. arrange financing for property developers, steel mills and other businesses starved for cash and shunned by China’s traditional banks.

  The lenders at Citic and other institutions that make up China’s “shadow banks” have created the closest thing China has to the culture of Wall Street. They take risks that traditional banks won’t, going so far as to create investment funds for assets like top-shelf liquor and mahogany furniture.

• China’s Central Bank Orders Financial Institutions To Reel In Lending

  Worried over the alarming rise in real estate prices and a ballooning credit bubble, China’s central bank on Monday told the country’s top lenders to improve their balance sheets and to reel in risky loans.

  This was the first message from the country’s financial authority regarding the credit squeeze. Lending rates started to ease on Monday, but China bank stock prices tumbled and the Shanghai Composite shed 5.3 percent.

• China again hopes to rein in real estate market with property tax

  China has once again been threatening real estate speculators with the big stick of a property tax. But the property market doesn’t seem to be overly concerned – and with good reason.

  While the central government clearly wants to keep property prices from skyrocketing, there is little appetite for tough measures, particularly at the local level. Revenues from land and property sales are just too important to local government budgets.

  In May, Beijing announced a list of priority policies for this year – and on that list was progress with a real estate tax on property values to be paid annually.

• Terence Tang Now Head of Asia Capital Markets at Colliers

  Colliers International today announced that Terence Tang has been appointed as Managing Director of Asia Capital Markets and Investment Services where he will lead a dedicated team of investment professionals across Asia.

  “Integration and empowerment are key in our restructuring of the Asia Capital Markets and Investment Services division. All our investment specialists will go beyond collaboration and strive for true integration,” says Piers Brunner, Chief Executive Officer, Asia, Colliers International. “Their expertise will not confine to their local markets; rather, they will be empowered with a comprehensive knowledge of major property markets in Asia.”

• China Beige Book Shows Fewer Firms Borrowing as Rates Rise

  Chinese bankers are reporting increased lending while fewer companies are taking out loans, an incongruity that helps explain the recent increase in borrowing costs, a private survey showed.

  The number of companies reporting loan applications in the second quarter fell 13 percentage points from the previous period to 38 percent, the survey from New York-based China Beige Book International said yesterday. The proportion of banks showing higher lending to businesses rose 10 percentage points to 45 percent, indicating that “credit appears to be concentrated on a few borrowers,” according to the report.

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