China’s property developers saw a jump in their inventory of unsold urban housings, the latest official statistics showed, in the newest sign of the sector’s growing troubles.
By the end of October, the country had a total of 133 million square meters of idle apartments and houses, a sharp 13% increase from the same period last year.
The vacancy rate is expected to rise further in the fourth quarter and may continue into 2009 as projects under construction are completed and put up for sale.
Professor Nie Meisheng, president of China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce said that with the real estate industry accounting for roughly a quarter of China’s fixed asset investment, the large number of unsold housing units in the country have frozen a sum of RMB600 billion ($86 billion), cutting into the cash flow of real estate firms.
Source: China Daily