Xinyuan Buys Land Parcel in Hunan Province for $112M

By Gail Kalinoski, Contributing Editor

Xinyuan Real Estate Co., a Beijing-based residential real estate developer, continues gobbling up land in high-growth Chinese cities to build more multi-family housing. The latest acquisition was a land parcel in Changsha City, Hunan Province, purchased for $112.2 million.

The 962,939-square-foot parcel is in a newly planned Central Business District west of Changsha City, where a new subway line will be opened later this year. The firm plans to develop high-rise apartments, low-density apartments/condos and commercial property with a total area of about 2.9 million square feet, according to a company press release.

“We have been studying the Changsha market for a long time and are excited to enter this fast growing capital city in Central China with strong consumption power and healthy supply demand balance in the local real estate market,” Yong Zhang, Xinyuan chairman, said in the release. “Entering the Changsa market fits our strategy of focusing on high-growth, second-tier cities and our business model for fast asset turnover.”

The acquisition comes about a month after the company announced it had purchased two land parcels for a total of $212.7 million.

In February, Xinyuan said it paid $153.8 million for a site in Chengdu City, the capital city of southwest China’s Sichuan Province. The site has approximately 807,702 square feet and the company plans to build high-rise apartments with an estimated 2.4 million square feet, according to a company press release.

The second parcel acquired in February for $58.9 million is in Sanya City, Hainan Province, in Yazhou Bay. An express train is under development and a new airport is also being planned by the Sanya city government. The site has 848,520 square feet and the company expects to build apartments with a total of 1.27 million square feet.

Zhang said in a release that the area is popular with tourists.

“We are pleased to have increased our project under planning inventory in Chengdu, a thriving market where we have developed two projects in the past two years,” he said. “We are also excited to enter the Hainan market, a premier vacation destination in China.”

In the February release, Zhang noted that the firm had acquired 11 parcels for seven development projects in six months. Four of those parcels were purchased in December via auction. The first two parcels are in Jinan, Shandong Province, and the remaining two are in Xingyang, Henan Province. The company paid a total of $218 million for the four parcels, where it will build apartments.

Xinyuan said in November that it had purchased a local privately-owned real estate company for $137.3 million and planned to develop a 1.5 million-square-foot residential project in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. It was the firm’s second development in Kunshan.