Shanghai Daily news

A woman looks at a housing model displayed at the Seventh Spring Real Estate Market Shanghai yesterday. Thousands swarmed the event, which attracted more than 200 property developers. (Photo: Shanghai Daily)

Shanghai residents do not seem to have dampened their enthusiasm to buy property despite the introduction of austerity policies and warnings of risks in the market, analysts said.
Thousands swarmed the Seventh Spring Real Estate Market Shanghai yesterday, which attracted more than 200 property developers, at the Shanghai Exhibition Center.
"The brisk scenes show strong demand and consumption power to buy housing in Shanghai," said Chen Dongyu, an official with Shanghai Zhonghao Exhibition & Service, the show's organizer.
The number of visitors is expected to well surpass last year's 85,000, Chen projected. The Spring Real Estate Market is held annually in the city.
"Many of my customers still plan to purchase apartments for investment purposes," said Xue Guangyue, a sales manager at Shanghai Zhengting Property Development Co.
Meanwhile, the growth in Shanghai's housing prices may slow this year but sharp price fluctuations are unlikely, said Colliers International, a real estate consulting company.
"Housing prices will be differentiated to meet different public demand for houses," said Lina Wong, managing director of Colliers International East China.
Investors, especially those from overseas markets, see the risks in Shanghai's property market as under control.
"Shanghai's real estate market has grown a little bit too fast, but the risks in the market are still manageable given Shanghai's robust economic growth," said Albert Lau, managing director of Savills Shanghai, a sales and leasing agent for ING Real Estate in the city.
The benchmark Shanghai Housing Index, which covers sale prices and trading volume of new houses and apartments, rose 2.1 percent to 1,429 points in February from a month earlier, said the Shanghai Real Estate Index Office.
Given the booming real estate sector, Shanghai's government and mortgage loan providers are tightening measures to curb speculative bubbles.
Many local commercial banks are thinking of drafting their own interest rates on individual mortgage loans following the central bank's permission for banks to set higher rates based on their own pricing mechanism.
On Wednesday, the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank,  lifted the minimum rate for a mortgage loan of more than five years to 5.51 percent from 5.31 percent.