Pressure from land prices

The record prices paid by developers for land in Beijing and Shanghai this week will further dampen people's hopes that house prices will fall any time soon and put even more pressure on policymakers to tame prices.

On Wednesday, Sunac China Holdings Ltd, a Hong Kong-listed commercial and residential property developer, bid 2.1 billion yuan ($343 million) to secure a plot of land in eastern Beijing. Since the company has committed to building 278,000 square meters of hospital facilities, the plot's total cost will be more than double. It has been estimated that the average price of an apartment will be more than 100,000 yuan per sq m, factoring in the construction costs, various taxes and fees and the developer's profit margin.

Then the next day, Hong Kong-funded Sun Hun Kai Financial paid 21.77 billion yuan for a plot of land in Shanghai.