Property map reveals agony of home buyers

"The average income level on the map is 7,100 yuan a month in Beijing, but I make only 5,000 yuan," said a netizen with the screen name "A-ling" on Weibo.com, a Twitter-like microblogging site.

Meanwhile, the map indicates Beijing's average home price is 47,000 yuan per square meter, but apartments in downtown areas, particularly near the city's top schools, can sell for three or four times as much.

Fifteen cities are printed green on the map, including Tianjin, Harbin, Qingdao, Wuhan, Kunming, Haikou and Guangzhou. Home buyers there need to save from five to eight years for the down payment.

It is relatively easy to buy a home in the less developed western cities, including Urumqi, Xining, Xi'an and even Chongqing Municipality, and landlocked cities of Taiyuan, Changsha and Shenyang, where an average wage earner needs to save for less than four years. These cities are printed blue on the map.

Lhasa is the only regional capital unmentioned on the map, as real estate is only fledgling and most residents, with their own property, have little demand for commercial housing.

China's real estate development climate index dropped 0.61 points from March to 95.79 points in April, the National Bureau of Statistics announced earlier this week, fresh evidence that China's property sector has showed further signs of cooling after years of rapid growth.

Despite the decline, owning a home remains one of the biggest challenge for China's young urbanites, particularly in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Staggering home prices have forced a multitude of new graduates to flee big cities and settle down in second or third-tier cities or back in their home provinces.

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