Welcome to Jiaxing: where China’s red-hot property market has come to town
Scarcity and high prices are forcing developers to lap up more affordable plots in smaller cities, and local authorities are struggling to stay in control
In a latest sign of the heat in China’s red-hot property market, an auction of nine plots of land scheduled for Monday in Jiaxing, a city about an hour’s drive from Shanghai, attracted at least 425 bidders.
As a result, the authorities had to change the venue of the auction from a conference room to the city’s 1,400-seat “grand theatre” to accommodate the representatives from property developers.
At the same time, the city announced a lock-up period to curb speculation. Starting from Sunday, homebuyers must hold on to properties for at least two years before putting them up for sale.
The starting prices of the land on sale range from 2,790 yuan to 12,100 yuan (US$405 to US$1,757) per square metre, just a fraction of that in the larger neighbouring cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou, according to documents published on Jiaxing government websites.
As land becomes more difficult to obtain in the country’s top-tier cities, property developers are chasing plots in smaller towns close to the major centres like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. On a nationwide basis, land deals in the first four months jumped 34.2 per cent in value from a year earlier and 8.1 per cent by area, according to official data.