In Qingdao, chances of winning the housing ‘lottery’ are as good as one in six, thanks to price controls
Government efforts to cool the property market in Qingdao through price and administrative controls has fuelled a sense of lottery-like expectation among thousands of buyers preregistered for upcoming sales
Government price controls on real estate projects have fuelled a treasure hunt among prospective buyers in the coastal city of Qingdao, where one residential project due for upcoming release has attracted six times more buyer registrants than flats available.
At the entrance of the sale centre of Pinghailinfeng, a residential project by Shandong Steel Properties, a large Chinese-language billboard warned homebuyers to beware of fraudsters posing as agents on behalf of the developer.
“Do not believe any middleman who market that they can get a [buyer’s] permit for you,” the sign read.
The billboard is a reminder of just how hot the coastal city’s property market has become. Gao Lixing, a salesman at the sale centre, said 3,000 to 4,000 buyers have preregistered for the latest batch of about 600 new flats to be sold.
“I’ll give you the information within 10 minutes after the project wins approval for pre-sale,” the salesman said. “Then you’ll have six to seven hours to come here to go through all the procedures. You’d better take public transport because I’m afraid there’ll be a traffic jam by then.”
Price controls set by the local government have capped the project’s selling price at around 10,000 yuan (US$1,575) per square metre, a substantial discount to the 18,000 yuan per sq m for pre-owned homes in Pinghailinfeng. Chinese developers typically release projects to market in phases, and normally prices increase with each successive release.