By Hao Zhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-08 15:37

Country Garden added 15.42 million square meters or 34 percent to its land reserves in July this year, as its total property owned rose to 45 million square meters at the end of last month, topping Chinese real estate developers.

Country Garden, headquartered in Shunde, South China's Guangdong Province, launched its initial public offerings in the Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing Ltd on April 20 this year. It also reported the largest land reserves with 45 million square meters in Chinese mainland by the end of July, doubling that of the second largest developer in China.

As investor confidence was sparked, Country Garden shares leaped up 35.13 percent on the main board of Hong Kong Exchange, with the market value beating HK$174.8 billion, the highest among Chinese real estate investors listed in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Yang Huiyan, the 25 year-old daughter of Country Garden founder and chairman Yang Guoqiang, and also the biggest share holder of the company, may have become the richest woman in China. Her 59.5 percent share value exploded to HK$100 billion.

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Established in 1997 in Shunde, Country Garden focuses on real estate development, construction, decoration, and property and hotel management in new districts and suburban areas of bigger cities as well as downtown centers of medium-sized cities.

Recently, the developer from southern China acquired four pieces of land, located in Shaoguan of Gudangdong Province, Tanggu of Tianjin Municipality, Chizhou of Anhui Province, and Xinganmeng of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The combined buildable floor space totals 8.35 million square meters.

The company has also acquired reserved land with a buildable floor area of 7.07 million square meters in the first half of July.

Country Garden is renowned for it's extremely low cost in procuring reserved lands. For example, there are 2.39 million square meters in terms of buildable floor area on the land in Shaoguan, and each square meter only cost the company 104 yuan (US$13.74). Also, the shrewd property developer spent only 171 yuan for each buildable square meter in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, for the total 690,000 square meters.

The company had reported that its expense on lands only made up six to seven percent of the housing price. Yang Guoqiang used to be proud of his business secret "low land cost, large-scale production, and efficient sales channels".

Considering the central government's constant efforts to cool down the real estate market, its large land reserves granted the company much more development space, said Chen Sheng, deputy president of the East China branch of the China's academy in indexes. Chen added that in the future, the public focus will probably shift to the development of land reserves.