People wait in a real eatate transaction center in south China's Shenzhen city to get a reserve number, June 1, 2015. (Photo: Xinhua/Mao Siqian)
After being cracked down in hospitals, Chinese scalpers now have a new target -- the red hot second-hand housing market in Beijing, as thousands rushed to buy a resold home amid spiking prices and loosening credit.
To seal their housing deals as quickly as possible, citizens lined up late at nights outside the city's real estate transaction centers to get a reserve number to register the transferring of house ownership as government workers can only handle a limited number of applications every day.
"The hotline of the service center is always busy," said Ms. Xu who had to came in person Friday to consult the staff at a real estate registration center in Fengtai District in Beijing for the second time.
Last time, she was told she had to supplement application materials. "The procedures would be too complicated if you don't find a realtor," Xu said.
The long queue began to form at 2 a.m., eight hours before the office opens at 8 a.m.. When it finally opens, the long line has extended to almost 300 people in waiting.
Even real estate agencies have to vie for online registration. Lianjia, a popular agency in China, has a daily quota of 40, for which they have to scramble within 3 minutes every morning, according to one of their branches in Beijing.
Consequently, scalpers spring up at such busy registration centers, where a reserve number for the first applicants from a scalper could cost as much as 200 yuan (about 31 U.S. dollars).
Li Xuejun, an experienced ticket scalper, said he had lined up at midnight each day to get the reserve numbers for the first 10 positions.
Real estate transactions in China have been soaring since January, as the government introduced new measures such as as de-stocking and tax relief to stimulate the housing market, thus fueling fears that house prices could go up even further.
Official data showed the number of second-hand house transactions surged 86.7 percent from a year ago in Beijing during the first quarter of this year.
