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China needs three decades to make homes affordable

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-05-07 10:02

China needs another 20-30 years of hard work before achieving its goal of making homes affordable for its people, a government official said Wednesday at a real estate forum held in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province.

Chen Huai, an official from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said that China had 210 million urban households by the end of 2009 but the total area of urban residences was only 13.1 billion square meters.

According to Chen, China has built about 70 million residential apartments in its urban areas in the past decade, which equals to one-third of the households. The figures indicated that only three or four out of 100 households moved into new apartments each year.

"China faces a severe housing shortage," Chen said. "Even if apartments didn't cost any money, four units wouldn't turn into 70 apartments."

Chen also denied that recent regulatory measures on the property market were the strictest ever in history, saying that the government is giving preferences to the low-income earners and first-time home buyers to help them improve their quality of life.