金融英语阅读辅导资料：Improved’ NBS housing data: price surge

会计考友

　　The average home sale price in 70 big- and medium-sized cities including Beijing, Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Urumqi increased 11.7 percent year-on-year last month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Wednesday.
　　The price of affordable housing in all of the cities increased 1.3 percent over the same month last year, with commercial residences increasing 15.9 percent and high-end residences seeing an 18.5 percent increase. The price of newly built houses smaller than 90 square meters increased 19.0 percent, the NBS announced in data published on its website.中 华 考 试 网
' O5 q& Y; {% Y# i. {  G. F; s$ ]　　The five cities that saw the biggest increases were Haikou, Sanya, Wenzhou, Jinhua and Guangzhou. Those cities saw newly built homes increase in price by 64.8 percent, 57.5 percent, 22.3 percent, 20.9 percent and 20.3 percent, respectively.
　　The price of existing homes in 69 cities grew, with the biggest increases coming in Sanya, Haikou, Shenzhen, Wenzhou and Yinchuan. Only Quanzhou, where prices dipped 0.9 percent, saw its existing home prices decline.
　　The data was more specific than the annual report the NBS released in February, when it said the average home price in the 70 big- and medium-sized cities last year increased 1.5 percent over 2008. Thousands of Internet users questioned the accuracy of the data, feeling home prices had soared too much and gone far beyond their reach in the past year.
　　The NBS later publicly attributed the low figure to a "computational event" and said its statistical methods needed to be "improved."
: _% T  L4 e% i& B　　"The NBS did make some improvements this time, and the data seems much more meticulous," Ge Ling, the research director of the Centaline China Real Estate Research Institute, told the Global Times, adding that to some extent it will "calm the temper of the public."
　　And analysts predicted that stricter policies would come since home prices have kept soaring and the government’s adjustment policies seem to have had little impact.
, p* m6 j' z2 t' ?: }6 e, [0 o' m　　"The market generally expects that stricter policies will be issued in the future," Qu Ruiming, an analyst with Guosen Securities, was quoted as saying by Internet portal NetEase’s financial channel.
　　Yang Hongxu, an analyst with the Shanghai-based E-house China Research Development Institute, said more policies suppressing speculation will be released in next two months, such as a tightening of loans to buyers who already own one home and wish to buy another.
　　But Ge of Centaline China said it would take some time for the current policies to take effect, and no more new policies will be released in the short-term.
　　The Ministry of Land and Resources in March required local governments to submit land supply reports and to allocate at least 70 percent of plots to affordable housing