Now China Has a Two-Speed Property Market, Too
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Central Bank Governor Zhou is proposing tailored policies
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Property imbalance is a key constraint on economic outlook
Call it China’s tale of two-tier cities. As property prices fell 3.9 percent in the port city of Dandong near the North Korea border in the past year, those in the southern hub of Shenzhen soared 57 percent.
The nation’s fragmenting property market is forcing diverging policy responses from local authorities and the central bank. On one hand, they want to stoke sales in smaller cities to cut oversupply and have lowered interest rates six times since November 2014 to help that happen. On the other, they’re worried about a renewed price surge in the biggest cities, with local authorities in Shenzhen and Shanghai among those taking steps to cool red-hot markets…