Urban land deals seen increasing fast in H1

A total of 306 cities in China comple­ted a total of 15,493 land transaction deals in the first six months of 2013, with the deals worth 1.13 trillion yuan ($184 billion), a 60 percent year-on-year increase, the Shanghai-based National Business Daily (NBD) reported Wednesday, citing data from property agency 5i5j.com.

Transactions for commercial land in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou reached 173.9 billion yuan in the first half of this year, close to the total for last year of 193.492 billion yuan, according to 5i5j.com.

Analysts said that local governments are ­fa­cing slower growth in their fiscal revenue and that the due date for them to pay off debts is approaching. With the added pressure of the recent liquidity crunch, revenue from land sales is their most realistic and important financial resource, according to the report.

Data from another real estate agency, Centaline Property, showed that China's first-tier cities saw a total of 514 land transactions in the first half of 2013, with their value rising by 315 percent year-on-year to 182.9 billion yuan.

The transactions included a few particularly big deals, the Beijing-based International Financial News reported Tuesday.

Beijing Maoyuan Real Estate Co purchased a plot of land in Beijing for 1.77 billion yuan on July 3, according to the report, while another plot of land in Shanghai was bought for 4.87 billion yuan by China Vanke Co.

Yin Bocheng, director of the real estate research center at Shanghai-based Fudan University, said land prices could also increase further, due to rising housing prices and local governments' need for capital to support their fiscal spending.