Build more homes to solve woes

I am afraid, as many others may be, that the government's guidance on the real estate market (especially that in the so-called first tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai), is a classic failure.

Last week, the Chinese-language press reported that in Beijing, the price of new homes exceeded 30,000 yuan per square meter outside the city's Fourth Ring Road, and was edging toward 20,000 yuan outside the distant Fifth Ring Road to the eastern part of the town, where the financial district is located. Calling that crazy, as the city's residents always do, is like a euphemism now, considering that in February, there were still some units marked below 35,000 yuan on the Third Ring Road.

The per square meter price going up 5,000 yuan in a month is reportedly not news any more, as property developers are all claiming that they haven't been able to build as many homes from last year, implicitly as a result of increasing government intervention.