(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-09 16:17

Nearly 70 percent of mid-income earners believe housing prices in China will continue to rise in the years to come, China Youth Daily reported on Wednesday, citing the result of a survey.

In the survey targeting mid-income earners conducted by the newspaper and an unidentified website, 38.9% of the 8,890 respondents said the rise in housing prices will continue in one or two years, but the growth will slow down, while 30.2% others thought the increase will accelerate.

Only 30.9% of the polled anticipated a drop in housing prices in one or two years, according to the newspaper.

On the trend of housing prices in ten years, 54.9% of the respondents foresaw a small or major drop, while the others believed the upward trend will go on.

In June, 70 large and medium cities in the country reported an average of 7.1 percent growth year-on-year in housing prices, figures from the National Development and Reform Commission and National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Beihai of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region led the cities with a 15.5 percent growth compared with the same period last year, followed by Shenzhen at 13.9 percent and Beijing at 10 percent.

"Even people with a mid-level income could not afford such a high price.", said Xiaochen, a bank clerk with an monthly income of 8,000 yuan.

He told the journalist that it would cost him at least 900,000 yuan, or 10 years of his income, to buy a 90 square-meter apartment around the fourth ring road in Beijing.

Analysts said that the government's macro economic control policies on housing price since 2004 were not effective as housing prices steadily increased these years.

However, 56% of the respondents still believed the government has the ability to control housing price while not influencing the economic development.