Mayor Han Zheng said Shanghai will take steps to cool the city’s real-estate market as housing prices in China’s financial capital are "too high".The city government will increase the supply of land for property development and speed up construction of affordable housing for low-income families in the second half of this year.
Record bank lending in China drove average prices for new homes 6.3% higher in June in 36 large and medium-sized Chinese cities. That gain came even as urban unemployment rose and wage growth for workers in Chinese cities slowed.
Mayor Han Zheng said, "The government should do something to effectively control the speed of growth of the real estate market. The housing price in Shanghai is already too high. We must prevent excessive inflation of home prices in this market."
Bloomberg reported Chinese banks made RMB7.37 trillion ($1.07 trillion) new loans in the first six months of 2009 as the government sought to bolster economic growth that slowed to the weakest in almost a decade in the first quarter. Some of the money entered China’s property and stock markets.