(Yicai Global) April 29 -- Shenzhen authorities have frozen the sale of 192 luxury apartments that were being sold in limited batches by a local property developer, which mislead the public into thinking they were in short supply and caused price speculation, a market player told Yicai Global yesterday.

China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings released an apparently limited number of apartments on March 7 in the upscale Taizi Bay area of Shekou district, worth an average of CNY30 million (USD4.2 million) each. They were some of the first properties to be made available to buyers after the Covid-19 shutdown and many were soon snapped up.

On March 13 and April 5, the Shenzhen-based developer released more housing in the same complex, leading to accusations by members of the public that such ‘batch sales’ were a form of price manipulation.

It is important to crack down on such speculative behavior, Zhang Xuefan, director of the city’s housing and construction bureau, told a local radio station yesterday. The bureau has suspended online property transactions at the real estate companies involved, he added. The developer’s other projects in the city have also been halted.

Shenzhen’s authorities are on the lookout for any signs of overheating in the real estate market. House prices in the hi-tech city rose 1.6 percent last month from February, the highest gain in a survey of residential house sales across 70 cities conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Three times more new houses were sold online in Shenzhen in March than in February, amounting to 3,152 units, according to Centaline Property Agency.

Editor: Kim Taylor