China's land market picks up again: report

BEIJING - China's land market regained steam in the April-June period after a quiet first quarter, with real estate investment picking up speed, according to an analysis report published by the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) on Sunday.

The Q2 composite index for China Land Index (CLI), released by the MLR's center of land and mineral legal affairs to gauge the health of the overall land market, increased 17.4 percent from the previous quarter, or 19 percent from the same period last year, the report showed.

It marked a rebound from the first three months, when the CLI witnessed a fall in major indices after the central government rolled out a string of measures to cool the country's red-hot property market at the beginning of the year.

During the April-June period, the property market climate sub-index for CLI jumped 29.5 percent from the previous quarter, or 11.4 percent from the same period last year, landing in an interval that points to "overheated development," the report said.

The climate sub-index was mainly pulled up by mounting investment in the property sector, which increased 91.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 23.8 percent year-on-year, according to Sun Yinghui, the center's director.

Sub-index for the land market scale was also up 26 percent from the previous quarter, or 20 percent from the same period last year, indicating a stubborn demand on the land market, said the report.

In the first half, both supply and demand for the land for real estate remained strong, showing that a policy to simply expand land supply to curb property prices is hardly sustainable, said Sun, urging more efforts to mobilize existing land resources and exploiting the vacant land.