A residential apartment block stands in the darkness on the southern bank of the Pearl River in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province.
It's 9pm, but only a few of the apartments have lights on inside.
Photos of unlit apartments like the one just described are proof developers and speculators are hoarding homes to push Chinese housing prices even higher, sources said.
Lu Hanxin, a Xinhua journalist, has been taking a photograph of the block once per month about 9pm.
The photos show that less than 10 percent of the apartments lights are being turned on, suggesting that 90 percent of the apartments are empty.
The photos were released last Friday and started to attract attention on Sunday.
The high-rise was put on the market in March 2007 and construction finished in April 2008.
The apartments were priced at 27,000 yuan (US$4,055) per square meter.
Developers and some analysts described such photos as "nonsense."
Ren Zhiqiang, chairman of Beijing-based developer Huayuan Group, said these types of investigations are biased, limited in scope and don't reflect the big picture.
"The photos may not be authoritative," netizen Shu Ke wrote. "But at least they can bring the issue to the government's attention."
The housing prices in Guangzhou City have jumped from an average 11,577 yuan per square meter to 13,558 yuan per square meter within the last year, despite a series of government steps designed to rein in prices.
The government tightened scrutiny of developers' financing and forbad loans for third home purchases. It also raised interest rates and down payment requirements.
China's central bank announced on October 19 its first interest rate rise in almost three years to check inflation and surging home prices.
"Curbing housing prices is indeed difficult," Premier Wen Jiabao said in Macau on November 17. "We have adopted many policies but prices keep rising."
National Bureau of Statistics head Ma Jiantang said in September that the bureau will collect data for calculating housing vacancy rates during the national census. Results of the census will be released next April.
