Land supply increased 5.8% in 2013

Land supply in 2013 increased 5.8 percent year-on-year with sales revenue reaching a record high, the Ministry of Land and Resources has announced.

Land sales revenue for the year totaled 4.1 trillion yuan ($676 billion), breaking the previous record of 3.15 trillion yuan in 2011, Beijing Times reported on Wednesday.

Data collected from 150 major cities revealed a consistent up trend in land prices last year, according to the report by the Ministry of Land and Resources.

The average residential land price rose 9 percent year-on-year to 5,033 yuan per square meter with overall supply increasing 26.8 percent to 200,000 hectares in 2013, the report said.

It's common nowadays for land prices in first- and second-tier cities to set record highs, said Zhang Dawei, chief analyst of Centaline Property.

He said some of the highest land prices are already exceeding completed property prices in the same areas. Therefore, developers with higher entrance costs would face mounting risks if the market price for their projects does not rise within a year.

Moody's, the leading credit ratings and research company, expects the positive momentum in the Chinese property industry to ease in 2014 alongside an overall slowdown in sales growth.

"Contracted (property) sales growth for the national market will slow down to about 10 percent year-on-year in 2014 after a year of extraordinarily strong growth in 2013," said Kaven Tsang, Moody's senior analyst. The market saw a 26.6 percent spike last year in sales value.

Property prices are expected to increase a "moderate" 10 percent across China's 70 major cities this year, according to Moody's research reports.