The Municipal Government of Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, will auction off more than 1.4 million square meters of land this month in a bid to cool down rising residential property prices.

A 110,000-sq-m plot was sold in the Guangzhou Development District (GDD) on Tuesday. Low-cost apartments will be built on the land to house local low-income families.

And there's more to come. The city's land sales in September are expected to set a record high for a single month - double that of the first eight months of the year - and will open up opportunities for local and foreign property developers.

Some of the land will be used to provide affordable housing for low-income families and migrant workers, while the rest will be used for commercial apartments.

The average price of residential homes was more than 12,000 yuan per sqm at the end of August across the Guangdong provincial capital's eight main districts.

Industry insiders predict the city's property prices will continue rising until 2015.

The city will auction 71 pieces of land over more than 5sqkm to property developers for affordable and luxury apartments, said Zhang Guangning, mayor of Guangzhou.

"It will be two times more than the total land auctioned off in the city in the past two years," said Zhang.

Zhang has pledged to put the brakes on the city's rising real estate prices. At the end of August, 720,000 sqm of land had changed hands in the city this year.

(China Daily September 7, 2007)