Beijing looks to stabilize property
- Source: Global Times
- [08:13 February 25 2010]
- Comments
Visitors view models of apartment buildings in a real estate fair in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province. Photo: Xinhua
By Zhao Qian and Sun Yongjian
Joint guidelines released by 11 local departments to stabilize Beijing's real estate market will have little short-term impact on soaring home prices, analysts said.
Increasing affordable housing and the supply of medium-and small-sized commercial residential houses was one of the highlights of the guidelines released late Tuesday by 11 departments including the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
The guidelines stipulate that affordable housing must constitute half of all new residential construction.
"At present, the newly built housing supply is below 10 million square meters, which is a warning level, and consequently it is difficult for the government to control the property market as a whole," Xu Chao, a research manager at Beijing Centaline Property Consultants Co., said Wednesday.
He Tian, an analyst with the China Index Academy, a real estate research institute, said "the newly built housing supply can only satisfy the demand for seven to eight months, and consequently home prices will not decline because it always takes a longer period for the developers to build more houses."
In March, 30-50 projects will be available to buyers, according to the academy's data. "It will help increase the total supply," He said.
The developers must disclose all their houses within three days after they are granted sales licenses, the guidelines also say.
The rule is aimed at curbing developers who try to stockpile properties to sell them later at a good price, but He said it would be difficult to put into practice because "the home sales chain is too complex to supervise."
The basic rules for foreigners' buying houses that were promulgated in 2007 and halted in 2009 will come into effect again, the guidelines said.
The rules state that foreigners can only sell a property in China if their employer pulls out of the country, and an individual is allowed to buy only one apartment.
The goal is to curb the foreign hot money driving up housing prices, "But I'm not sure that this measure will be really effective without very strict supervision," Tian Chenhong, a manager of the Benchmark Property Company, said.
She said that some foreigners speculate on houses by renting or selling them to their friends, so as to avoid the authorities' supervision.
Yi Xianrong, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said there was nothing new in the guidelines compared with the 11 measures to cool the property market released at the end of last year.
"Tightening the credit for developers is the only way to suppress the soaring home price," he said.
The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) released an announcement barring all the real estate trust companies from offering loans for land purchasing, the Shanghai Securities News reported Wednesday, quoting unnamed sources with the CBRC. Getting loans from real estate trust companies is an important financing channel for the developers.
Some other cities including Hangzhou and Tianjin released similar measures related to last year's 11 measures, and He of the China Index Academy said those local governments have shown an intention of stabilizing the real estate market.
