The first apartment building in Wuqing Development Zone constructed by Beijing Uni-Construction Group Company (BUCC) was completed for sale a couple of days ago, marking the "coming out" of the first construction projects planned for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan circle.
Three hundred potential buyers lined up for the 142 apartments that opened for sale at the price of 6,100 yuan ($4001) per square meter. Though most buyers are from the local region looking to improve their housing condition or obtaining the residence permit of Tianjin, 40 percent of the potential buyers came from Beijing to invest.
Guo, who works in the Yizhuang area of Beijing, said he has optimistic feelings about the location of the project because there's the Wuqing stop on the 22 round trips of Beijing-Tianjin bullet inter-city train a day, which takes 22 minutes from Beijing to arrive at. "It's not a short distance to the city area of Tianjin, but close to Beijing though, and taking account of the future Yizhuang stop, it would be very convenient to commute in the regions," he said. However, the insiders in the industry say that it's important for potential buyers to take transportation costs into consideration, as prices add up whether they're taking the train or the highway.
Wuqing Development Zone locates in Bohai Economic Circle, and the experts and residential buildings project occupy 276,000 square meters over 1,700 apartment units, equal to a medium community scale, which is expected to be an ideal area for foreign experts working for the companies based in the development zone.
"This is the first time we used the BT mode (BT investment refers to a transformation of BOT, meaning "build to transfer," wherein the government builds infrastructure by bringing in foreign or private funds through special preapproved agreement, and after the completion, the related facilities and constructions would be redeemed by the government according to the agreement) to complete a project to develop and construct the Wuqing Development Software Innovation Park," said the BUCC representative in charge of the project. According to him, 10 percent of their future construction projects target the area of Tianjin and Hebei Province for the metropolitan circle plans.
After finishing up the large-scale construction project mission for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Commission encouraged local construction companies going outside the city and the country to explore new markets, especially focusing on the projects for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan circle plan. Last year, three regions have co-signed the agreements of co-construction markets which includes the 30 pilot companies could no longer need to issue the registrations on record to the authorities once more for bidding the new construction projects in Beijing, Hebei Province and Tianjin with the certificates issued by the departments signed the agreements.