Chinanews, Beijing, Jan. 22 – A recent survey shows most Chinese public attribute the high housing price to the three main factors of local government’s lack of enthusiasm in controlling housing price, high profit in property industry, and the government’s ineffective macro control measures.

 

The survey was jointly carried out by the China Youth Daily Social Investigation Center, Information Center of Sina.com, and ePanel, a market consulting firm. After investigating 2,582 people, the survey finds that 67.5% of the respondents say that local governments lack any enthusiasm for lowering the housing price. 60.7% believe that since property developers have made lucrative profits from real estate industry, they are reluctant to drag the housing price down. Still, 40.3% think that the government’s macro control measures have proved ineffective in property industry.

 

The result was very much different from what the public thought two years ago. In May, 2005, the China Youth Daily Social Investigation Center made a phone investigation to about 500 residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Shenyang. The survey result then showed that most interviewees blamed speculative activities (51.6%), lucrative profits for developers (44.7%) and fast urbanization process (38.9%) as the three main factors for the high housing prices.

 

Though comparing these two surveys, it can be seen that the public has changed their views on the reasons of the high housing prices. Apart from property developers, most of the public now think that government, especially local government, should shoulder the main responsibility for such high housing prices.

 

The survey also shows that 96.8% of the interviewees think that Chinese property market has bubbles. 47.3% believe that such bubbles will burst “within ten years”, but 12.3% of them think that the bubbles won’t burst until “ten years later,” and 37.2% of them say the bubbles will last.

 

In predicting the housing price trend, 27.8% of the respondents to the survey say the housing price will “continue to surge in 2007,” and 49.7% of them say it may climb slightly higher than its present level. Only 7.5% of the respondents say it will “maintain its present level” or “go down a little bit” and 13.1% of them think it will “go down slightly.”