Land price at record high in Beijing, Shanghai

China's property market continued to warm up as land was sold at a record high price in Beijing and Shanghai and property developers accelerated their land hoarding rate.

On Tuesday, a parcel of land in Shanghai's bund was sold for 2.77 billion yuan ($445 million), which equates to 36,000 yuan per square meter. This was the highest land price for Shanghai's land market this year.

Also on Tuesday, Beijing's land authority offered a parcel of land within the third ring road with a starting price of 2 billion yuan, which was translated into 33,800 yuan per square meter, a record high for Beijing's land market this year.

"Both pieces of land are well located so it is not surprising that they hit a price high," Chen Guoqiang, vice-director of China Real Estate Society, said. "Because the land deals in the first half of this year were not not good, local governments have been in a hurry to release new land extensively at the year's end, among which are many good land parcels."

Statistics showed that local governments are speeding up the pace of land release. In the past week, the total residential home-use land transfers of Beijing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Changchun,Nanjing and Hangzhou reached 653 hectares, the highest weekly transfer of the year, according to research institution Centaline, a national house brokerage.

Property developers also raced to purchase land. In the first 22 days of November, five major Chinese developers paid a total of 11 billion yuan to purchase land. China Vanke Co Ltd alone paid 3.86 billion yuan to buy land.

Analysts said special attention should be paid to whether the rising enthusiasm of developers and local governments to buy and sell land would push up house prices.

zhengyanpeng@chinadaily.com.cn