A REAL-ESTATE investor in Shenzhen is selling over 100 apartments in Futian District, which will bring him nearly 300 million yuan (US$43.36 million) in total, according to takungpao.com.

    The city’s housing market has been going through a stagnant period after the government introduced a range of policies to tame the property market in October last year. There were 804 new apartments traded in Shenzhen last month, hitting the lowest point in over nine years.

    Jiang Shaojie, a manager at Midland Realty, said that most potential homebuyers were taking a wait-and-see attitude towards the market. He anticipated that home prices in Shenzhen might go down by 15 to 20 percent this year.

    A real-estate investor, surnamed Hu, had purchased over 40 apartments in a commercial building near the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian District as of 2009 in his company’s name.

    Most of these apartments are small, with an area of 68 square meters. With an average price of 15,000 yuan per square meter, each apartment cost him nearly 1 million yuan.

    Hu has been worried that his apartments would lose value after the city’s new property policies took effect, so he sold over 30 of them at the end of last year, for an average price of 66,000 yuan per square meter, meaning each one was sold for at least 4.5 million yuan.

    In a bid to promote the sales, he decorated the remaining seven apartments and equipped them with home furnishings early this year. He also cut the price of each apartment from 4.5 million yuan to 4.1 million yuan, which was lower than the average price of apartments in nearby residential estates.

    If Hu sold all of his 40 apartments at 4 million yuan a piece, he could earn at least 160 million yuan, quadrupling the 40 million he had invested in these apartments in 2009, according to the report.

    Hu also purchased over 60 small apartments in the Huaqiangbei area 10 years ago. He could earn at least 135 million yuan by selling these apartments as their average price has soared from 10,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan per square meter over the past decade.

    Like Hu, many real-estate speculators have been putting their apartments up for sale since the home prices in Shenzhen started seeing a downward trend. A realty agent with Centaline Property, surnamed Zhou, said that one investor had lowered the price of his 66-square-meter apartment in Luohu District by nearly 1 million yuan to relieve his financial burden.

    According to another realty agency, an investment company that had purchased over 100 apartments in Futian District is also looking for buyers, and the company has lowered their prices by 10 to 20 percent since the new property policies were announced late last year. (Zhang Yang)