China Vanke chair Wang Shi again warns of China housing bubble
Firm's chairman reiterates alarm as housing prices keep rising despite government measures
China Vanke chairman Wang Shi said the mainland's property market faces the risk of a "bubble", reiterating concerns the developer raised three months ago.
Home prices have been increasing even as the government in March stepped up a three-year campaign to cool the market.
The measures have included raising down-payment and mortgage requirements, imposing a property tax for the first time in Shanghai and Chongqing, and enacting purchase restrictions in about 40 cities. New home prices jumped 6.9 per cent in May, the most since they reversed declines in December, SouFun Holdings, the mainland's biggest real estate website owner, said.
Wang said in a March CBS broadcast of the 60 Minutes news programme that the housing bubble could spell "disaster" for China's real estate market and that debt held by developers is a serious problem.
He said yesterday he disagreed with the news programme's conclusion that the bubble would burst immediately, as the housing market in the country was very diverse.
He referred to "ghost towns" where homes are built and left unoccupied, while as much as 60 per cent of other housing projects in other cities were snapped up the first day they were put up for sale.