Thursday 7 January 2010

Mainland probes 25 property firms over land use

Mainland regulators are conducting a probe of 25 property projects and their owners over alleged breaches of land use rules, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Thursday.

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Guanyu said...

Mainland probes 25 property firms over land use

Reuters in Shanghai
07 January 2010

Mainland regulators are conducting a probe of 25 property projects and their owners over alleged breaches of land use rules, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Thursday.

The investigation, jointly conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, is mostly targeted at developers with fund-raising plans, the newspaper said, citing sources at the agencies.

The owners of the projects, located in 15 provinces and cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, are suspected to have breached land use rules, it said. It did not detail which companies were involved.

The government has taken an increasingly tough line to rein in property speculation, after a rapid rise in prices last year fuelled fears of a property bubble.

Among the measures, Beijing has stiffened rules for leasing government land, including demanding down payments of at least half the transaction price.

Full payment for land must be completed within a year after a transaction, although that can be extended to two years in some circumstances, the finance ministry said in December.

The newspaper also quoted sources as saying that regulators were working on new rules to supervise fund-raising plans of all public listed companies.

Major property developers like China Vanke and Soho China had warned last month that a property bubble was forming in some markets.

Vanke said on Thursday that its property sales in 2009 rose 32.5 per cent.