New property rules driving rent prices

BEIJING - The demand for apartments in China's first-tier cities continues to boom despite the soaring cost of rent, driven in part by the government's stricter policies for home purchases and the large numbers of migrant workers who came to big cities after the Spring Festival holidays.

By January, the country's real estate rents had risen by 7.1 percent above what they were a year earlier, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Feb 15.

"My landlord has charged an extra 200 yuan ($30) a month and we have to accept it, since the whole city's rents are rising in February," said Davis Wang, who recently renewed a rent contract that obliges him to pay 2,750 yuan a month for a two-bedroom apartment he shares with a friend in Beijing.