Sun Hung Kai Properties said it also expects prices to start rising basing its claim on the strong response it has received for its Lake Dragon villa project in Guangzhou.
'Guangzhou's market was the first to fall, and it's the first to bounce back. We've seen that in trading volume of the first-hand property market in the fourth quarter last year, and now property prices have pressure to rise because units were sold so quickly,' said Alfred So, executive director of Sun Hung Kai Real Estate Agency.
He confirmed that Sun Hung Kai's 60% owned Lake Dragon project had drawn more than 100 registered buyers, each paying $44,000 deposits to be in line to buy 85 units offered in the first-phase sale.
However official figures show that property prices are still falling even in Guangzhou where they dropped 4.5% in March according to the data from China's National Bureau of Statistics.
But it could be that the official figures are behind what is happening on the ground. According to Colliers International villa prices have dropped less than apartments. Guangzhou home prices have bottomed out and risen as much as 20% after the government encouraged banks to increase lending and allowed foreigners to buy property, according to Eric Lam, Colliers International's general manager in the city.
'Guangzhou is among the top three cities in China where residential prices have dropped the most, together with Shenzhen and Dongguan,' Lam said but pointed out that while high-rise condominium prices have dropped as much as 50% from the peak in 2007, villa prices dropped less than 10%.
Lam said this was because villas are an extremely scarce resource since the central government stopped allocating land for such homes.