China Real Estate Mogul’s Tax Evasion ‘Excuses’ Rejected – Today’s China Real Estate Links | November 27, 2013

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

• China Real Estate Mogul’s Tax Evasion ‘Excuses’ Rejected

  Property mogul Ren Zhiqiang’s rebuttal of a China Central Television (CCTV) report revealing a huge amount of unpaid land appreciation tax (LAT) by major real estate firms was rejected Monday by the lawyer who calculated the unpaid taxes.

  “Ren’s arguments are nothing but bad excuses used by property developers to blindfold the public,” Li Jinsong, a Beijing-based lawyer and certified tax agent, told the Global Times on Monday.

  Li, who previously worked for tax authorities in East China’s Jiangxi Province for over 10 years, found that 45 major listed property companies in the country had failed to pay 3.8 trillion yuan ($623.58 billion) in LAT between 2005 and 2012. Li said his calculations were based on official data.

• Chinese Cities Unveil New Property Cooling Measures

  At least 10 Chinese cities have come out with their own property cooling measures so far in the recent two months, in response to sizzling housing prices in major cities across the country.

  Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province in east China, is the latest to join the rush into tighter regulation, saying it will the raise the minimum down payment ratio for second-home purchases while increasing supplies of affordable homes.

  The discrete, published today on local government’s website, follows similar statements from local governments in Nanchang and Xiamen yesterday, and Xi’an over the weekends.

• Nationwide home ownership database hampered by local govt

  Beijing is speeding up the development of a nationwide home ownership database, a move that faces strong resistance from local governments.

  A cabinet meeting on November 20 put the Ministry of Land and Resources in charge of registering the ownership and use of immovable property – including land, housing, grassland, forests and the sea – and called for the sharing of the information among government departments and the provision of public access to it.

• Smaller banks cut home credit

  More small and medium-sized commercial banks are suspending mortgage loans in the fourth quarter, according to an industrial report.

  Housing loan suspensions have been reported in 17 out of 32 cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, said the report by rong360.com, an Internet search platform for loan resources, which surveyed more than 500 banks.

  A rapid increase in loans in the first half of the year resulted in a lack of loan quotas for the next half, said the report. The overdraft of credit drained the fund for mortgages in the latter half of the year, particularly the fourth quarter.

• The Rent in Shanghai Is Too Damn High: an Infographic

  The great Xinjiang blog Far West China (via Shanghaiist) has put together an infographic comparing prices between Urumqi, the region’s only major city, and Shanghai, China’s largest. Here are cost of living differences measured in five different ways:

  Though hardly a major data sample, the infographic provides insight into an issue plaguing China’s economy: high housing prices in first-tier cities. For example, the minimum wage in Shanghai is only about 50 percent higher than that of Urumqi, and the consumer price index between the two is roughly equivalent.

• Fashion Brand Phillip Lim Opens Beijing Flagship Store

  Three years after staging a runway show with Beijing’s ancient city wall as a backdrop, Phillip Lim returned to the city this week to host a splashy party marking the opening of his first retail store in China.

  Lim invited 500 people to fete the 2,700-square-foot, two-story 3.1 Phillip Lim flagship store at the Taikoo Li, the luxury brand end of Sanlitun Village compound.

• Shanghai’s home sales sluggish as supply falls again

  Shanghai continued to post a sluggish home buying sentiment last week despite a slight rebound, as sales stayed below a 300,000 square-meter threshold, and supply fell again.

  The purchases of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, climbed 5.3 percent from the previous seven-day period to 273,100 square meters in the city, but they stayed below the threshold for the second straight week, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said in a report released yesterday.

  The local supply of new houses fell by a week-over-week drop of 41.3 percent last week to under 130,000 square meters, Deovolente said.

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

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