The numbers look good, but real estate is in trouble in China

A credit crunch, dwindling transactions and falling prices in some hot markets are adding up to trouble for the Chinese real estate industry.

Although official figures show investment in property rose 32 percent in the first four months from a year earlier, developers are worried as bank loans dry up and the cost of tapping other sources of funds rises.

Falling home sales are a particular threat to developers, who typically rely heavily on cash from the sale of unfinished projects to pay for operations and expand.

Chinese home buyers learn to borrow

Home buyers in China used to pay the full price for a house upfront. But a new generation is following a pattern familiar one seen in the U.S. a few years ago -- they're borrowing more for real estate. Lisa Chow has more.

First English Real Estate Search Engine Launches in China

Jipingmi.com, the leading real estate search engine in China, officially launched an English version of the search yesterday. English.Jipingmi.com collects real estate property listings from a variety of English property listing sources and organizes
the results into one, easy to use, search platform.

Since the launch of Jipingmi.com (Mandarin for "How many square
meters?" or "A few square meters") in late 2007, Jipingmi.com has rapidly
emerged to be amongst the top players in the Chinese real estate search
engine market. Jipingmi.com now aims to open the platform to international
users.

Jipingmi Co-founder and VP Strategic Development, Alex Farfurnik said
English.Jipingmi.com will organize the foreign real estate market in China.

China Binjiang Real Estate eyes RMB 1.5 bln A-shares IPO

China's Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co Ltd<002244>, the professional real estate developer in the country, starts up its IPO plan with the aim to raise as much as RMB 1.5 billion, market sources reported. The company plans to raise as much as 60 million shares, accounting for 11.54% of its total capital stock.