Waiting game for most in property
Chen Junfeng hesitated - and now he regrets it. The middle-aged father wants to buy a bigger home, but every time he finds a suitable apartment he is reluctant to take the plunge.
"I hesitated about buying several bigger flats that I saw and liked from June last year to this August - and I really regret that," said Chen, who works for a foreign-backed company in Guangzhou.
"I swore earlier this year that I would buy something over the National Day holiday at the start of October - but again, I was torn. It's a dilemma."
"Housing prices have rocketed so rapidly, despite government policies to rein them in. I'm afraid prices will go even higher in the near future," he said. "But housing is also so expensive now that I'm afraid it will hit its peak and there'll be a downturn as the new policies hit the market."
He said that the average price of a property project he was interested in went from about 6,000 yuan per sqm last July to over 8,000 yuan per sqm during the May Day holiday. Over the National Day holiday it hit 12,000 yuan per sq m.
"So I decided to wait and see," he said, adding that he will keep waiting if the price stays stable in the next few months. Chen said he will buy by the end of the year if the price continues to rise in the next few months.
But not all homebuyers are as hesitant.
"I can't keep waiting for prices to fall - that's just a fantasy," said Yang Yi, a technician for a State-owned firm in Guangzhou, who has been looking for an apartment to live in when he gets married early next year.
"Have any of the policies aimed at keeping the property market stable halted price growth in the past couple of years?" he asked. "In my view, those policies might affect attitudes in the short term, but I bet prices will go higher."
Yang bought a 90-sq-m apartment during the National Day holiday.
"The new property policy of raising the down payment to 40 percent and lifting the interest rate has affected real estate developers' and homebuyers' attitudes this month," said He Zhida, an analyst with the Guangdong Real Estate Association.
"A growing number of buyers are taking a wait-and-see approach. Real estate developers have been anxious to sell as many apartments as possible over the past two years," He said.
Many Guangzhou real estate developers are heavily discounting and offering incentives to offload properties, but the price is still high for projects.
"It's likely that developers see this as their last opportunity to exploit the housing bonanza," he said.
(China Daily 11/06/2007 page15)
