Developers to lower prices
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One of China's most controversial property tycoons, Ren Zhiqiang, said developers could reduce home prices on their own to bolster the government's policies. This comes as a change of pace for Ren, who has stated several times that prices would keep going up.
Ren, president of Beijing-based Huayuan Group, told a forum in Boao, Hainan Province over the weekend, "If the developers reduce the prices first, the government would not have to push any new stricter policies," according to the forum's official website.
Ren also complained that the government would eventually find a way to make him cave in, even if he did not want to cut the prices.
Ren, whose blog has over 23 million hits, has constantly angered the public with his unsympathetic comments about soaring home prices. "Young people should not be able to afford houses," he once opined.
The central government began releasing policies to keep housing prices from rising at the end of last year. Some departments, including the Ministry of Land and Resources, also expressed their conviction in attacking the pricing problems, saying that they would "not give up half way."
Nie Meisheng, director of the Chamber of Real Estate with the All- China Federation of Industry and Commerce proposed China impose property taxes at the same forum.
The housing prices in China "have already become a political issue", Ren said to web portal Netease during the forum break.
"I am confused about how many and which cities are included in the government's controlling plans, and what will it do in the future. Actually the growth of housing prices has already slowed down, " Ren said.
The growth rate of home prices in May was slower than the previous month, and prices in 70 big-and-medium sized cities may decline slightly in the second half of this year, according to a report by REICO, a real estate research institute.
Ren said on his blog that as the rotating chairman of China Urban Realty Association, which includes several developers like global leader China Vanke, he had suggested its members actively respond to the government's policies.
Some developers have already begun to sell apartments at discount, but these actions are still not widespread.
Ren said his group will keep buying land plots and will not cut the prices for the apartments they sell.
