Shanghai government halts land auction amid drive to cool property market

Shanghai’s planning and land bureau has suspended the planned auction of a plot in the city center that would have started at RMB4 billion (US$631 million) after Mayor Han Zheng said this month that the municipality had made controlling housing prices a priority, Caixin reported, citing a notice from the bureau. Zhang Hongwei, head of research at Tospur Real Estate Consulting, said the government had halted the sale to prevent the property market from overheating. The magazine cited an unnamed executive from a major Shanghai property developer as saying that buying land in the city is getting more difficult because prices are rising and the government is attaching many requirements to sales.