SHENZHEN is stepping up efforts to crack down on irregularities by real estate agents and developers, in a bid to regulate the city’s property market, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported.

Authorities will clamp down on shady practices such as withholding apartments to increase profits, artificially inflating housing prices, publishing fake advertisements or fake information about the apartments, market manipulation and fabricating and disseminating false statements.

The city’s housing and construction bureau recently investigated a number of cases that violated pricing rules. The quoted prices of four residential estates in the city, including two in Bao’an District and two in Longhua District, were found to have risen sharply on suspicion of speculation.

According to media reports, the two residential estates in Bao’an were found to have a sufficient supply of apartments, while transactions of the other two in Longhua had been bleak for the past 90 days.

According to the sampling data collected by Shenzhen Real Estate Intermediary Association on May 14, the highest quoted price of TATA Apartment, a residential estate in Bao’an, stood at 198,654 yuan (US$27,873) per square meter, up 222.17 percent compared with the average reference price of the area.

The other three housing estates were also discovered to have inflated housing prices by 96.68 percent, 185.08 percent and 132.95 percent.

The bureau immediately launched an investigation into the residential estates involved, and checked the listed price of pre-owned apartments posted by real estate agencies. At present, the agencies involved have been ordered to make corrections to their professional misconduct. (Zhang Yu)