China's real estate investment soared 28.5 percent from a year earlier to 988.7 billion yuan (US$130.6 billion) in the first half of 2007, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Friday.

The growth was 1.6 percentage points higher than the first quarter and 4.3 percentage points higher than the same period last year, according to the NBS.

Analysts contributed the rising investment to booming housing demand, excessive liquidity and robust housing price hikes.

"The land resources authority has accelerated land supply growth in the first half of the year in hope that surging house prices could be reined in, which inevitably led to an investment hike in the real estate sector," said Qin Hongyu, analyst with BNP Prime Peregimne.

Amid investment by real estate developers, domestic bank loans rose by 25.9 percent year-on-year, enterprises' self-raised funds increased by 28.4 percent and foreign funds soared 68.7 percent.

The NBS announced on Friday that the real estate climate indices reached 103.63 points, 0.31 point higher than May and 0.7 point higher than the same period last year.

The total area of "developed" land in China rose 7.6 percent to 118 million square meters in the first half.