Beijing's land sales highest in 21 months

BEIJING - The Beijing municipal government netted 25.74 billion yuan ($4.06 billion) in land sales in September, the highest for a month since December 2010, new data has revealed.

This took the city's land sales in the first nine months of this year up to 50.85 billion yuan, Sunday's Beijing News reported.

Eight plots of commercial land in Beijing were sold on Saturday for a total of 8.6 billion yuan.

Beijing has seen an increase in land deals since August along with obvious price rises, said Zhang Dawei, an analyst with Beijing-based Zhongyuan Real Estate.

The robust momentum, as demonstrated last week, shows that developers now have a "passion" for bidding for land, and the land market on the whole is heating up, according to analysts.

Hot land markets have also been seen in other major cities, including ?Hangzhou and Wenzhou, both in east Zhejiang province.

The sector will continue warming and show a sharp spike in sales in the fourth quarter of the year, the Beijing News quoted Zhang as saying.

The country's property market has cooled significantly since the central government started to introduce measures to cap runaway prices in 2010.

But home prices have picked up in recent months following the central bank's move to slash interest rates to buoy the slowing economy, which grew at its lowest rate in more than three years in the second quarter of the year.