No takers for 'buy one, take one' at half-built project

A "buy one floor, get one free" promotion at a half-built housing project in a small Chinese city has failed to attract any buyers amid a depressed property market, according to the Nikkei Asia.

Though offer was attractive, the price tag of 1.45 million yuan (HK$1.58 million) was still too high for most people in the lower-tier city of Tongling in Anhui province, where the average income is between 3,000 to 4,000 yuan per month, the Nikkei quoted a resident as saying.

It will take more than 13 years to absorb the existing housing supply in Tongling, the report, cited an estimate by an analyst at Minsheng Securities.

Earlier, Country Garden (2007), which was China's biggest developer last year but with a large exposure in lower-tier cities, posted a 60 percent year-on-year decline in sales last month to 12.07 billion yuan.