THE rental housing market in Shenzhen has been sluggish recently due to increased supply, but many landlords refused to lower rent prices, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

    “The supply of rented apartments is adequate, but many apartments remain available after being put up for lease over a month ago,” said a realty agency’s staffer in the Qianhai area. He said apartments in some estates were sought after before, but now it’s hard to lease them out and landlords refused to lower the rent.

    Statistics from the realty agency website qfang.com showed that there are over 280 vacant rented apartments in three estates in Qianhai that the staffer labeled sought-after estates.

    According to a realty agency’s staffer near Futian Checkpoint, a residential estate in Futian District released a growing number of rented housing since March. “Dozens of rented apartments in that estate have remained vacant for almost two months, but the homeowners don’t want to reduce the rent,” a staffer said.

    “Normally, an apartment could be leased out within a month or even sooner, but now some apartments remain vacant for over a month despite being in popular estates in Qianhai and the Dongmen area,” said Zhang Qian, a senior researcher of qfang.com.

    Property speculators that were banking on rising house prices have discovered they will lose money by selling their purchased apartments and are choosing instead to rent the apartment, leading to a rise in the number of rentable apartments in Shenzhen.

    “I bought four small-sized apartments earlier this year, but I didn’t sell them before the new policies were put in place, so I decided to lease them out before I have a chance to sell them again,” said a speculator, going by the alias Dao.

    Zhang said housing transactions in Shenzhen from April 2015 to March this year increased by 101,885 apartments compared with a year ago, and she estimated that about 30 percent of these apartments were sold to speculators.

    According to accommodation rental websites, the rental housing supply in April has increased by 20 to 30 percent over the past year. But the market demand hasn’t shown obvious growth, leading to empty apartments.

    Data from qfang.com showed that the average monthly rent in Shenzhen grew by 16 percent from 61 yuan (US$9.4) to 71 yuan per square meter over the past year. The house rent of some estates in Qianhai and Dongmen areas went up by at least 20 percent.

    “I will lower the rent if there is still no business in one or two months,” Dao said. Dao has to repay a bank 30,000 yuan per month for buying four apartments, and he plans to lease his apartments out for 20,000 yuan per month, but he will have to alter the strategy if the business remains sluggish for half a year.

    Another speculator, identified as Jian, said he won’t change his investment strategy because his apartments are vacant only for a few months. “The situation will continue until the housing price goes up again and some apartments are sold,” he said.

    Zhang said the vacant rented apartments in some estates are isolated cases, and there is still large demand for rental housing in the city.

    A newcomer to Shenzhen, surnamed Dai, said he couldn’t afford higher rent. Dai earns 4,000 yuan per month, meaning he can only rent a single room in Xiameilin.

    (Zhang Yang)