September 2, 2008
The Beijing Olympic Games didn’t save Beijing’s fizzling real estate market from gloom, despite the hopes of investors and developers.
According today’s Beijing Times, which cited statistics from the Beijing Construction Department’s website, the total number of the home sales in the August “Olympic Month” dropped 25% from July, to 1,780. The decline is a more dramatic 67% when compared to the same period last year. But the report also said that the CBD area is the only spot that seems immune from the market downturn; its home sales increased 31% from last month.
The report also quoted a manager with real-estate developer Yahao who said that the reason behind the fall might be that home buyers’ interest in the Olympic Games affected their enthusiasm, and Olympic traffic policy might have prevented many potential buyers from getting into the city.
In response to the rumors that the Beijing’s housing market is heading to a fall after the Olympic Games, China Securies Journal recently ran an article quoting Lu Yingchuan, a government officials from the Beijing Development and Reform Committee who insisted:
There is sufficient evidence that the housing market is not going to have big fluctuations…Beijing’s GDP is in the range of 7,000 – 10,000 USD per capita, and history indicates that any city in this range will maintain growth momentum.
- China Securies Journal via Xinhua (Chinese): Beijing Development and Reform Committee: the doom theory of the Beijing housing market is groundless
- Beijing Times (Chinese): Beijing home sales declined 67% during the Olympic Month