(Shenzhen Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-06 09:18

Two Shenzhen-based developers said Saturday that they have won land auctions in the northern port city of Tianjin for a combined 3.3 billion yuan (US$440.3 million) to cash in on the country's red-hot housing market.

Shanghai-listed Gemdale Corp, which has a property development venture with Dutch financial services firm ING Groep NV, said it had bought 178,884 square meters of land through an auction for 2.27 billion yuan.

The property, located next to the Binhai area, a development zone modelled on Shanghai's Pudong financial district, will be used for developing residential and commercial projects.

Shenzhen-listed Zhenye (Group) Co said it won a separate auction of a 34,841-square-meter land in Tianjin for residential development for 1.06 billion yuan.

Domestic property developers are scrambling to boost their land reserves to tap rising domestic real estate prices, which have been fueled by housing demand as well as speculation that the country’s currency would appreciate further.

Hong Kong-listed Guangzhou R&F Properties said Friday that it had bought a plot of land in the northern city of Taiyuan for 680 million yuan as more developers shift their focus to second-tier cities.

Shanghai-listed Poly Real Estate Group, a mid-sized developer affiliated with China Poly Group Corp, said two weeks ago that it had signed deals to buy land in three cities for more than 6.1 billion yuan.

Shares of property developers are among the star performers in the A-share market this year, with shares in Gemdale and Poly up 50 percent in the past month.