The average price of residential property per square meter in Shenzhen rose 6.61 percent year on year to 5,780 yuan (US$698.07) in the first three months of this year, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Urban Planning and Land Resources said last Friday.

During the past three months, residential property sales totaled 2.42 million square meters, up 10.26 percent from a year earlier.

Wang Feng, director of Shenzhen Real Estate Research Institute, said there were several major factors leading to the rise in housing prices during the first quarter of this year.

Shenzhen's booming economy, which grew at a sizzling 17.3 percent last year, also boosted demand in the property market.

The speeding-up of infrastructure construction such as the metro system has pushed up prices of residential property along some mass transit routes.

The urbanization of Bao'an and Longgang districts outside the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and their integrations with the four districts within the SEZ have also boosted the prices of residential property outside the SEZ.

(Shenzhen Daily April 19, 2004)