Between January and May Shanghai's real-estate investment dropped for the first time in the past 5-and-a-half years, probably due to macro-economic controls.

 

So said the Shanghai Statistics Bureau. Its latest report shows Shanghai's real-estate investment reached 45.333 billion yuan (US$5.66 billion) in the first 5 months of 2006, 0.2 percent down on the same period of last year.

 

The ratio of real-estate investment to total fixed assets investment also fell from 35.8 percent to 32.9 percent.

 

Some analysts believe the reduction in investment is closely related to macro-economic controls which began in March this year.

 

Yin Bocheng, a professor at the economic department of Fudan University, said step-by-step macro-economic controls brought in to cool down Shanghai's property market "have now begun to show their effect on the market".

 

In the first half of last year, Shanghai's property market was seeing overheated growth. Many people were worried that the situation could not continue and the "bubble" would burst.

 

New regulations from the central and local governments raised the percentage of down payments and brought in new transaction fees. Many speculators seem to have been driven away and the market reined in somewhat.

 

With the latest regulatory measures effective from June 1, developers and investors are facing an even more stringent situation and the property market in Shanghai has continued to cool.

 

"To adjust to the new situation, developers and investors are now in the process of restructuring their development plans and the pace of investment has slowed down because of the uncertainty of the market," said Yin.

 

However, some analysts believe that the drop in investment is just a temporary phenomenon.

 

"Investment may slow down for one or two years, but after that temporary decline it will definitely climb," said Zhang Tao, a senior analyst at Shanghai Centaline Property Agency Ltd.

 

"The stock of properties now is enough to satisfy the demands of the present market," said Zhang. "So developers and investors need not rush to increase their investment until they can see policy trends and related market situations clearly."

 

Weng Haitao, a researcher with the Shanghai office of Savills China, said the drop in investment had mainly hit the residential market.

 

He said investment in low-cost housing was on the decline.

 

"The central government hopes to offer affordable homes for ordinary people, but local governments usually ignore these wishes and continue to direct most of their investment into commercial properties that can bring them a decent profit."

 

As for investment in offices, Weng said, "it might not be on the rise but it did not drop".

 

Meanwhile, some analysts such as Weng believed foreign investment grew in the first quarter.

 

Foreign investment has for a long time been regarded as something which partly caused the overheated growth of Shanghai's property market and drove up the city's property prices.

 

But this source of cash from overseas has not yet been affected by the controlling measures.

 

It flooded into Shanghai's property market in the first quarter of 2006 and even caused an outcry; several scholars called for special policies to curb such investment.

 

Kenny Ho, senior manager at Jones Lang LaSalle's research department in Shanghai, estimated the total value of assets acquired by foreign funds in Shanghai so far this year is around US$1 billion. And it may account for some 4 percent of the total sales of commercial offices in Shanghai.

 

Ho said that though many foreign companies have bought Shanghai property in the last few months, foreign investment should not be held responsible for rising prices as the its slice of the market is still small.

 

(China Daily June 21, 2006)