The land transfer revenue of local governments surged in the first three quarters of 2010, according to the latest report released by the China Index Research Institute.

Shanghai's land transfer revenue during the period hit 114 billion yuan, exceeding that of the entire year of 2009. Among the top 10 cities in terms of land transfer revenues, only Chongqing's land transfer revenue was off 9 percent from a year earlier.

According to the report, despite the considerable impact posed by housing regulatory policies on land market transactions in the first nine months of 2010, the land transfer revenues of local governments saw a remarkable increase.

The top 10 cities in terms of land transfer revenues are all in relatively developed regions. Except for the relatively lower land transfer revenue growth rates for Hangzhou and Ningbo, the land transfer revenues growth rates for the other cities all were above 40 percent.

China's 105 cities transferred residential land totaling 309 million square meters in the first nine months of 2010, up 59 percent from a year earlier. In September, the 105 cities supplied residential land totaling 37 million square meters to the market, a month-on-month increase of 29 percent and a year-on-year increase of only 11 percent.

After the National Day holidays, many listed companies began to accelerate the pace at which they bought land. On Oct. 8, the Youngor Group, Hua Ye Real Estate and Zhang Jiang Hi-tech Park published reports on land purchases, and the money spent was more than 5.7 billion yuan in total.

The COFCO Property Group, a central state-owned enterprise, also declared that it had spent more than 3.1 billion yuan buying a commercial-residential land lot in the Huanggu District of Shenyang, which is called "the last golden land." The starting price of this land was about 1.7 billion yuan, and the premium rate of the purchase price was as high as 84 percent.

According to the information issued on the evening of Oct. 11, in the first nine months of 2010, the Gemdale Group had signed contracts to purchase more than 1.3 million square meters of land in total, equal to the land they bought in the same period of 2009. The money they spent was nearly 15.4 billion yuan in total, up nearly 3 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, the Poly Group, another real estate giant, had signed contracts to spend nearly 41.4 billion yuan to purchase more than 4.8 million square meters of land in the same period. The amount of money spent and the total land area was up more than 23 percent and 28 percent, respectively, compared to the same period of last year.

Source: People's Daily Online Editor: Xie Fang