(Yicai) Feb. 6 -- China’s land auction market showed signs of recovery last month, as the country’s top 100 land buyers bought 45 percent more land plots compared to a year earlier, according to recent data.

The top 100 land buyers spent a total of CNY85.6 billion (USD11.9 billion) to buy plots in January, according to data released by the China Index Academy on Feb. 1.

One of the reasons for the increase in land acquired by property developers is that since last October, many cities have canceled restrictions, such as the maximum price limit for auctioned lands, effectively increasing the transaction premium rate and improving market expectations, Liu Shui, corporate research director at the CIA, told Yicai. Moreover, Chinese New Year, which is usually a low season for land auctions, fell in January last year, resulting in a low base.

The land auction market had already shown signs of recovery in December, Liu noted. While in the first 11 months of last year, the purchase value of land acquired through auctions fell 6 percent from a year earlier, the figure rose about 1 percent in December, with about 1,500 monthly transactions, compared with 600 to 700 the previous months.

However, most of the developers that acquired land last month are local state-owned enterprises, so it is still early to determine whether the sharp increase in land purchases in January is a spontaneous market progress, Liu said.

Nearly half of the top 100 land buyers active in January were urban investment companies under local governments, according to data from China Real Estate Information Corporation. The amount they spent to buy land was nearly 40 percent of the total.

Only 10 of China’s top 100 real estate developers by sales acquired land in January. This is because the top priority for most of them is still ensuring delivery and cash flow, so they are very cautious about investment and land acquisition, according to a CRIC research report.

State-owned real estate firms and some private ones in good financial conditions will have a relatively positive attitude toward land investment in the first quarter of the year, especially toward attractive land plots, the research report also showed.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione