No bubble here. You may need to register with scmp.com to read the entire articles. – Ilene
(Thank you, Terry)
New home loans up 1,600pc in Shanghai
Mainland banks in Shanghai’s red-hot housing market lent 99.58 billion yuan (HK$113.2 billion) in new mortgages last year, up dramatically from 5.8 billion yuan in 2008, as home seekers rushed to buy and prices hit new highs.
The banks lent 38.93 billion yuan to buyers of new residential properties and 60.65 billion yuan to buyers of second-hand homes, the Shanghai office of the People’s Bank of China said yesterday.
Lending soared more than 1,600 per cent compared with 2008, when the property market and overall economy were hit hard by the global financial crisis, the central bank said.
Beofre you start worrying, know this. (Classic Chinese oxymoronic title.)
No sign of bubble despite soaring home prices in Shanghai
Shanghai’s residential market shows no signs of a bubble despite a hefty price increase because demand remains strong, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.
Price increases "do not mean that the market has reached extreme valuations that typify a bubble", the real estate service firm said in a report yesterday. "Overall, the policy environment will evolve to keep prices from growing too quickly."..
Soaring home prices on the mainland have sparked asset bubble worries among the country’s top leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao who promised to take action.
According to Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services, average housing prices in the city jumped 65.3 per cent last month from a year earlier, hitting a record 20,187 yuan (HK$22,930) per square metre.
Shanghai Securities News reported earlier this month that the mainland would probably start imposing property tax in selective cities this year, a heavy-handed move to cool the red-hot housing market…
And rest assured, the non-bubble is going to be curbed.
Mainland to curb lending binge, says chief regulator
Mainland will slow its massive lending spree and step up monitoring of banks as it tries to prevent speculative bubbles in real estate and other assets while keeping the country’s economic recovery on track, a top regulator said on Wednesday.
Mainland’s banking system is healthy despite last year’s explosive growth in credit and regulators could manage the risks, said Liu Mingkang, chairman of the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission…
After handing out some 9.5 trillion yuan (HK$10.8 trillion) in loans last year, banks were expected to scale back lending to roughly 7.5 trillion this year, Liu said.
The total amount of loans this year will grow by as much as 18 per cent year over year, compared to nearly 32 per cent last year, he said.
“This year we will continue to control the pace and demand of the credit supply,” he said. “We shall control, and we have controlled, the credit growth the whole year round.”
