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Figures for nation's vacancy rate elusive

By Cheng Anqi (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-08-16 17:02

Last month, a message from an unknown source spread like wildfire around the nation that "in China's 660 cities, up to 65.4 million vacant housing units left their electronic meters reading 'zero' for six consecutive months," China Real Estate News reported.

Although the State Grid Corp denied the figures in the message , it didn't dampen the passion of the curious civilians and netizens determined to figure out how high the nation's housing vacancy rate really is.

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As recently as two years ago, Zhang Jingqiu and Meng Bin, two professors at Beijing Union University City Science, conducted a survey on the service condition of electricity meters in more than 50 residential areas in Beijing, finding that the average housing vacancy rate reached 27.16%.

"Generally, it is normal to see a great demand for electricity in the scorching summer days. But if two-month electricity consumption for a common house is merely about 10 degrees, it can be believed as a vacant house," Zhang said.

Reports on tap water usage have also seen similar results.

Latest statistics released by some employees of Hangzhou Water Group in Zhejiang province showed that 30,000 water meters in more than 20 residential areas of the city read "zero" in the past six months.

Instead of meters, unlighted houses may, to some extent, tell the truth more accurately.

From 9 to 10 pm every night, instead of carrying passengers, Beijing taxi driver Li Jie steers his cab to several top-grade residential buildings and has taken more than a hundred photos of the buildings with unlighted rooms.

However, the State Grid Corp said the country currently has 300 million meter users, and its composition is very complex.

Enterprise users and rural users are mixed together, which makes it very difficult to identify the city's housing vacancy rate.

So far no government department in China has conducted a thorough survey of the vacancy rates.