Regulators collaborate to restrict property IPOs
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The Ministry of Land and Resources of China (MLRC) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) are cooperating to crack down on real estate developers who violate the rules as they seek to apply for IPOs or to refinance through the capital market, the Shanghai Securities News reported Tuesday, quoting unnamed "authoritative sources."
The report said 25 property projects suspected of being involved in irregular land use spread across 15 provinces, including Beijing, Liaoning and Jilin, are under review at present. A written report about the results of the review was due from the CSRC by the end of last year, though it's unclear whether or not it will be released to the public.
Developers whose violations of the regulations include stockpiling land lots without developing them in a fixed period and using the farm lots without legal procedures will be restricted from listing, the newspaper said.
Calls to the MLRC's press office did not receive a reply.
"If the regulators really reviewed them strictly, it would limit the developers' financing channels," Chen Guoqiang, director of the real estate research center of Peking University, said Tuesday.
"Every single regulator has been examined for those kinds of violations for several years while limited impacts have been achieved, but this time the actual combined actions of the two regulators may be much more effective," Yang Hongxu, a department director of the E-house (China) R&D Institute, said Tuesday.
Those real estate developers who developed no more than one third of the land lots they purchased in the last year would be offered restricted land loans and financing opportunities, and projects that used land irregularly would be forbidden from receiving loans or getting listed, according to regulations released by the State Council in 2008.
Since last September, the CSRC has begun to take advice from the MLRC and the Ministry of Housing and Urban- Rural Development on reviews of developers' financing applications.
Yang said the move is one of a series of central government policies aimed at suppressing soaring home prices. Land prices continued to set records in some of China's big cities after the real estate market began a strong recovery last year.
Shanghai Baohua Group Co. bought land for 2.42 billion yuan ($354.37 million) Wednesday, paying 12,500 yuan ($1,830.42) per square meter, a premium of 336 percent over the property's listed sale price.
Chen said the regulators' action warned developers to expand their scale and purchase land lots rationally, adding that some developers bought land at too high a premium, causing high home prices.
But some analysts said the regulators' restrictions may force more developers to list in Hong Kong.
"Historically speaking, the procedures of getting listed on the A share market on the Chinese mainland are much more complicated than listing in Hong Kong, and this restriction will push more mainland companies to the Hong Kong market," Zhang Yanwen, an employee with Beijing Capital Land, which has already been listed in Hong Kong, said Tuesday.
Share prices of mainland real estate developers listed in Hong Kong rebounded Tuesday after a days' long slump, after developers said at a financial forum Wednesday that they had enough capital the Xinhua News Agency reported.
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