Over 20% of urban properties stay vacant

More than 20 percent of homes owned by urban households in China remained empty in 2013, a report showed yesterday.

The overall vacancy rate for residential properties in urban areas across the country gained 1.8 percentage points from 2011 to 22.4 percent last year, translating into around 48.98 million homes being vacant during the period, said the joint report by the China Household Finance Survey and the Research Center of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

About 87 percent of urban households in China own their homes, higher than UK's 20.3 percent, the US' 21.8 percent and Germany's 33.7 percent, the report said. In rural areas, 95.8 percent of families own their homes.

The report also pointed out that 18.6 percent of the country's urban households owned more than one property last year, and the figure rose to 21 percent in the first quarter of this year.

The vacancy rate for government-funded affordable homes, built for low to medium-income families, was 23.3 percent, indicating a waste of government resources, the report said.

Feng Jun, chief economist at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, had said earlier this month that China has no official definition of vacancy rate for homes, although it releases the number of homes that are vacant for more than six months.