CHINA invested 1.551 trillion yuan (US$227.1 billion) in housing construction projects in the first nine months of this year, a growth of 28.7 percent on the same period of last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

Of the total, 63.8 billion yuan went to projects targeted at low-income earners, up 19.9 percent. About 2.404 billion square meters of housing were built between January and September, up 20.3 percent. Property firms developed 179 million square meters of land for real estate development nationwide, down 1.6 percent.