Property prices in Guangdong province are not expected to increase this year, said Wang Shao, secretary-general of the Guangdong Real Estate Association, on Thursday.

Wang's forecast was made on the basis of the continuous decline in property trading seen in the province in recent months.

Visitors at a housing show in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Real estate experts and developers said property prices in the province will drop further this year as the government maintains housing curbs.?[Photo/Xinhua]

According to the Guangdong provincial statistics bureau, less than 6.22 million square meters of commercial apartments changed hands in the first two months of the year, a year-on-year reduction of 22.6 percent. In the same period this year, the value of property sales in the province reached 48.55 billion yuan ($7.7 billion), a year-on-year decline of 28.5 percent.

The average price of properties in Guangdong province, which borders the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, was 7,807 yuan a square meter in those two months. That was down 7.5 percent year-on-year.

The same months, though, saw 54.7 billion yuan invested into the real estate sector, a 40 percent year-on-year increase.

Also in January and February, construction was ongoing on real estate projects that occupied more than 287 million square meters, up by 19.2 percent year-on-year.

Of that, properties occupying 8.67 million square meters were completed in the two months, up by 10.5 percent year-on-year.

"Since the beginning of the year, many property developers have been under pressure because of a reduction in sales and decline in property prices," Wang told a forum that discussed Guangdong's real estate industry in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, on Thursday.

He urged developers to adjust prices to attract more property buyers, sell more apartments, improve their cash flow and withdraw currency from circulation.

Li Wenjiang, an analyst with the Guangzhou-based Hopefluent Group Holding Ltd, said: "I find little reason to hope that property prices will increase this year.

"The central government, which has set an economic-growth target of 7.5 percent for the country and has recommitted itself to controlling property markets this year, has looked at the decline in property prices carefully.

"This is not the time for residents to purchase apartments this year," the analyst said.

He said many Guangzhou developers began at the start of the year to try to attract buyers by lowering the prices they are selling certain properties for.

Huang Wenzi, a property developer, forecast that Guangdong property prices will fall by 15 percent this year.

Many residents are waiting to see what the coming months hold before they decide to purchase real estate.

"I think property prices in Guangzhou will continue to go down this year, so I will not buy a property now," said Chen Zhicong, a white-collar worker in Guangzhou.

"I'll wait until property prices return to something reasonable before I buy my first apartment."

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