A STATE-OWNED company was established Sunday, aiming at rolling out affordable housing projects for professional talent in Shenzhen.

    Funded by the city government, the company is mainly engaged in financing, constructing and purchasing housing projects for professional talent. The governmental investment in the company is 100 billion yuan (US$14.93 billion). The city government aims to provide 300,000 subsidized apartments to eligible talent by the end of 2020.

    The proposal to set up the company was put forward by Shenzhen Party chief Ma Xingrui last month during a meeting with the city’s political advisers. Ma said the government-subsidized housing built by the company will be leased at reduced rates to talented individuals, the most important driving force in Shenzhen’s future development as an innovative economy.

    The housing prices in Shenzhen, the first special economic zone in China, have seen constant growth since the end of 2005.

    By February this year, home prices in Shenzhen had risen an astounding 46 percent since the beginning of last year — by far the most among all major Chinese cities, according to official statistics. Shanghai’s housing prices rose 16 percent while Beijing’s rose 10 percent in the same period.

    Shenzhen has replaced Beijing as the country’s top housing-price-to-income location due to its rising housing prices, said the Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute in a study released in February.

    According to the study, a growing technology industry, limited supply of land and less-stringent buying restrictions have driven buyers to the city.

    Five academics who settled in Shenzhen this year also attended the company’s launch ceremony. Each of them was presented with a work fund of 1 million yuan and offered keys to 200-square-meter rent-free apartments by the city government.

    The government also offered awards to eight institutions to honor their roles in introducing professional talent to Shenzhen. South University of Science and Technology of China was given 2.9 million yuan and Shenzhen General Institute of Architectural Design and Research Co. Ltd. was granted 5 million yuan.

    During the 13th Five-Year Plan from 2016 to 2020, Shenzhen plans to build 400,000 government-subsidized apartments, including 300,000 for professional talent.

    A report released by 58.com last year showed that a huge number of fresh graduates in China spend one-third of their salaries on rent, and those living in first-tier cities like Shenzhen have to pay almost half of their monthly income to landlords.

    (Zhang Yang)