Ming Wei Real Estate Investments

Malaysia's Sunway Holdings Bhdis to undertake a resort-style development in Jiangyin with a potential gross development value of 473 million ringgit (145 million U.S. dollars), its first property venture in China, local media reported on Tuesday.

The project will be developed with the Shanghai Guang Hao Real Estate Development Group Co. Ltd through a joint venture called the Jiangyin Guang Hao Real Estate Development Co. Ltd.

Sunway, through the Hong Kong-incorporated Sunway Real Estate (China) Ltd, will own 65 percent, or 130 million shares, of the joint venture.

A credit crunch, dwindling transactions and falling prices in some hot markets are adding up to trouble for the Chinese real estate industry.

Although official figures show investment in property rose 32 percent in the first four months from a year earlier, developers are worried as bank loans dry up and the cost of tapping other sources of funds rises.

Falling home sales are a particular threat to developers, who typically rely heavily on cash from the sale of unfinished projects to pay for operations and expand.

Home buyers in China used to pay the full price for a house upfront. But a new generation is following a pattern familiar one seen in the U.S. a few years ago -- they're borrowing more for real estate. Lisa Chow has more.

Jipingmi.com, the leading real estate search engine in China, officially launched an English version of the search yesterday. English.Jipingmi.com collects real estate property listings from a variety of English property listing sources and organizes
the results into one, easy to use, search platform.

Since the launch of Jipingmi.com (Mandarin for "How many square
meters?" or "A few square meters") in late 2007, Jipingmi.com has rapidly
emerged to be amongst the top players in the Chinese real estate search
engine market. Jipingmi.com now aims to open the platform to international
users.

Jipingmi Co-founder and VP Strategic Development, Alex Farfurnik said
English.Jipingmi.com will organize the foreign real estate market in China.

China's Hangzhou Binjiang Real Estate Group Co Ltd<002244>, the professional real estate developer in the country, starts up its IPO plan with the aim to raise as much as RMB 1.5 billion, market sources reported. The company plans to raise as much as 60 million shares, accounting for 11.54% of its total capital stock.

Markets in Taiwan, one of Asia's worst laggards as an investment destination in recent years, were livened up by the Nationalist Party's victory in the March 22 presidential election. On May 20, winner Ma Ying-jeou will be inaugurated, succeeding Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party.

During Mr. Chen's eight-year tenure, Taiwan's benchmark stock index barely budged, even as Hong Kong's shot up 75% and Shanghai's doubled. Right after Mr. Ma's victory, Taiwan's index shot up nearly 10% above where it was shortly before the vote, but after some cooling it is now 4.6% higher than on election day.

Property prices in 70 large and mid-sized Chinese cities rose 11 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Friday.

The price hike is 0.8 percentage points higher than that in the previous quarter, the NDRC said in a joint statement with the National Bureau of Statistics.

Prices of new apartments jumped 11.8 percent, down 0.4 percentage points from the same quarter last year, while prices of second-hand flats rose 11.5 percent, up 1.7 percentage points.

SHANGHAI: China's main stock index sank to a fresh 12-month low in tiny turnover on Tuesday, undermined by a continued slide in property shares. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended the morning down 1.19 percent at 3,257.574 points, after hitting a low of 3,212.150.

That left it below an 11-month low of 3,271.290 hit on April 3, which traders had considered technical support. The index lost 5.62 percent on Monday, posting its biggest drop since January, as property developers were hit by rumours that authorities might take fresh action to curb rises in real estate prices.

Poly Real Estate Group lost 7.41 percent to 22.50 yuan after dropping 10 percent on Monday. It said its first-quarter net profit soared 230 percent, but this was partly because some of last year's sales were settled during the quarter, and investors are in any case looking toward the second half of this year.

As we continue our series of articles on the best online resources for researching global emerging property markets, we focus this week on China. Although economic growth has slowed slightly recently, China is now the 4th largest economy in the world as measured by nominal GDP and still has tremendous growth prospects over the longer term. While there are political risks and clean land title only exists in certain areas (like Shanghai), the rewards for agents and investors are potentially huge.

It’s a challenging market to approach, because its regulation is relatively new and untested and there can be considerable language and cultural obstacles to overcome when establishing partnerships with reputable companies.

E-House (China) Holdings Limited ("E-House") (NYSE: EJ), a leading real estate services company in China, today announced it has been honored as China’s largest real estate agency and consulting company for 2007 by the China Real Estate Top 10 Committee. E-House also received awards for the best overall strength and as the best comprehensive service provider in China’s real estate agency and consulting sector.