Rumors have been spreading recently that prices of second-hand apartments in Beijing are rising fast, and industrial analysts said the government should respond to the rumors, as well as paying closer attention to fluctuations in house prices.

"Rumors about house prices will trigger panic purchases, disturb normal operations and undermine the effects of real estate curbing policies, so government departments should take action to clear them up," Ni Pengfei, director of the City and Competitiveness Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Monday.

"Meanwhile, close monitoring of the real change in house prices is necessary, as there are potential risks behind a continuous rise in the price of homes and land," said Ni.

Rumor spreads fast

The price of a second-hand, 100-square-meter apartment in Zhengtai Jiayuan, a community in Beijing's Xicheng district, suddenly went up to 3 million yuan ($48 million) last month from 2.3 million yuan, 21cbh.com reported on December 12.

A potential buyer surnamed Cai was told by a member of staff at real estate agency HomeLink that the apartment had gone up by 700,000 yuan in a week, as the house owner had changed his mind about the price, the report said.

News of the price hike spread fast and triggered panic purchasing in some other areas of Beijing, the report claimed.

But Zhang Dawei, a research director at the Beijing office of Centaline China Real Estate, said that his company had not noted a sharp rise in Beijing prices.

"Prices of second-hand houses are climbing, which is true, but no surge has been observed," Zhang told the Global Times.

A salesman working at HomeLink and selling apartments in Zhengtai Jiayuan also said Tuesday that he had not heard about a price hike of 700,000 yuan for any apartment in the community.

A Beijing resident surnamed Jiang who has been looking for a suitable two-bedroom apartment near the CBD area of Chaoyang district said she has failed to find a home so far.

"It's hard to find high-quality apartments in the second-hand market with a convenient location and that are close to schools," Jiang said. But she said that prices in the CBD area have been relatively stable so far.

Continuous rise

Sales of second-hand homes were slack at the end of last year and beginning of this year, dampened by rigorous curbing policies for the real estate sector that started in 2010 and were strengthened in 2011.

The policies included restricting home purchases by non-local residents in major cities and raising down payments for multiple-home buyers.

But in March, house prices in Beijing started to rise again, Zhang said, and a recovery in the second-hand house market has become more obvious since last month.

Kong Dewen, who bought a 58-square-meter home in Wanzijie community in Xicheng district early this year, found that he has become popular with real estate agencies since November. He gets calls from the agencies every day, asking whether he would like to sell his one-bedroom apartment.

"I bought my apartment at a price of 1.3 million yuan in February this year. Real estate agencies including the one which helped me buy the house are now trying to persuade me to sell it. They told me the current price would be as high as some 2 million yuan," Kong told the Global Times on December 16.

Second-hand house prices are climbing in suburban as well as downtown areas.

Ni Min, a mother living in Daxing district of Beijing, said she has been looking for a two-bedroom apartment for months but has not yet bought one.

"Prices have been rising by 100,000 to 200,000 yuan per apartment over the past six to seven months, which is beyond my ability to pay," Ni told the Global Times, noting that she may have to wait for a period of time before deciding whether to buy or not.

January and February is traditionally a time when Chinese people get married, and industrial observers believe the trading volume of apartments early in 2013 will be higher than in previous months as young Chinese couples prefer to live in their own apartments instead of rented ones.

Another reason behind expectations of a continued rise in prices is the stable policy signaled by the government, Hui Jianqiang, a senior analyst with the E-House R&D Institute, told the Global Times.

According to the Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded on December 16, curbs on the real estate market will not be relaxed, but urbanization in China will move gradually forward.

"With urbanization being pushed forward, rural residents will relocate to urban areas and new houses will be built in cities," Hui said. "So the policy is positive news for the real estate sector in the long run."

Since the second half of 2012, banks have also begun offering more credit to developers, which has eased the capital pressure that many of them were facing.

Not only Beijing

Beijing is not the only city that has seen a rise in second-hand house prices. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Tuesday that 35 out of 70 major cities nationwide saw growth in second-hand house prices in November.

But the rise was relatively small, at just 0.9 percent month-on-month on average, the NBS said.

When compared with November of 2011, only 18 out of the 70 cities saw a rise in prices, with year-on-year growth of less than 4.7 percent, the NBS said.

Land has also been auctioned at record high prices in recent weeks, Shanghai Evening Post reported Tuesday.

Between November 27 and December 7, eight pieces of land in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Suzhou have been sold for record prices, the paper said.

On December 12, for instance, four developers including Vanke and Greenland Group bought a 107,500-square-meter piece of land near Shanghai South Railway Station for 5.4 billion yuan.

The Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) refuted rumors that there is a shortage of land for new housing developments in the country.

There are still 7,461 hectares of residential land available for apartment building in the real estate sector this year, an area equivalent to 10,450 standard soccer fields, the MLR said Tuesday.