Beijing Youth Daily
December 24, 2009

Apparently unaffected by the global economic recession, Beijing's real estate prices have continued to rise this year after last year's brief slump. Amidst complaints about the house price escalation, last week a government minister openly admitted to the media that he couldn't afford a house in the city.

Angry fingers were pointed at developers' speculative land hoarding. The developers are accused of sitting on land that the government released, waiting for the price to rise further in order to realize a higher profit when eventually they do sell or develop it.

Now the government must feel compelled to do something to contain the land speculation: today's Beijing Youth Daily reports that the Ministry of Land and Resources recently released a list of 18 land development projects nationwide including five in Beijing that involved developers failing to develop their land timely.

The Ministry stated that it would urge developers to start development of the idle land. Those who failed to develop one year after bidding for development rights will face fines of up to 20 percent of the amount of their bids. If they still leave the land idle after two years, the land will be taken back by the government.

As the prices of new homes runs sky high, many people have cast their eyes to the second-hand home market, which has experienced an abrupt jump in transaction volume recently. In order to cope with this increasing number of transactions, the government is now extending its house exchange registration service to weekends. The front page above shows people waiting to register their house transactions at about 10 pm last night at Chaoyang District's House Exchange Hall in Beijing.