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Greater Bay Area
BusinessChina Business

Zhaoqing’s high-speed railway connections with Greater Bay Area cities put property prices on the fast track to growth

  • Zhaoqing has the lowest home prices in the Greater Bay Area at 7,000 yuan per square metre, around 28 per cent of the prices in Shenzhen and Guangzhou
  • Improved transport connections with Foshan, Guangzhou and Hong Kong will attract buyers to go the garden city

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Zhaoqing, which is the biggest city in the Greater Bay Area in terms of land mass, is also known as the garden city of Guangdong province. Photo: Weibo
Enoch Yiu

Home prices in Zhaoqing, the largest city in the Greater Bay Area, has the best growth potential among the 11 cities in the scheme, which will be driven by the Chinese government’s economic development plan and transport infrastructure, say analysts.

Zhaoqing’s property prices can rise by about 10 per cent in the next one year as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic wears off, while the increase in other cities in the scheme will be between 5 and 10 per cent, said Ted Lam, managing director of Zhuhai, Macau and Greater Bay Area at Midland Realty.

The city, located in the western part of Guangdong province, has the lowest property prices in the bay area, according to data from Midland Realty. The average price here is 7,000 yuan (US$1,024) per square metre, compared to 8,000 yuan per square metre in Jiangmen, which ranks second from bottom.

At the other end of the spectrum, Zhaoqing’s home prices are about 28 per cent of that in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the two most expensive property markets in the scheme, which stands at 25,000 yuan per square metre.

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In March 2016, Beijing first introduced the Greater Bay Area strategy as part of the 13th Five-Year Plan, with additional policy measures introduced in February last year to create an economic powerhouse that combines Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in southern China. The plan calls for an improved transport network and measures to allow smoother flow of talent and capital between these cities among other things.

Already, a railway connecting Guangzhou and Foshan with Zhaoqing since 2016 has shortened the travelling time to under an hour between the three bay area cities. And high-speed train services between Hong Kong and Zhaoqing, launched in July last year, has cut the travel time to the so-called garden city to about two hours from more than four hours by bus.

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