In the first five months of the current year, China invested RMB 1.0165 trillion ($148.8 billion) in real estate development, marking a year-on-year growth of 6.8 percent. The growth rate in question was up 1.9 percentage points compared with that registered in the first two months of 2009, and was down 25.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year.
The housing area under construction in China in the January-May period totaled 2.185 billion square meters, up 11.7 percent year on year; meanwhile, in the same period construction work started on a total housing area of 357 million square meters, representing a year-on-year drop of 16.2 percent.
In the January-May period, the real estate sales volume in China rose 25.5 percent from a year earlier to 246.44 million square meters.