Rental housing to get more focus
in underpinning home prices and many of them reported growth in both new home and existing residential prices.
A total of 44 cities out of the 70 major cities the NBS monitored across the nation reported a month-on-month new home price rise in February, with Nanchong of Sichuan province taking the lead with a 1.7 percent gain. Compared with last year, 59 cities reported price rises, and eight cities’ growth rate was above 10 percent.
Experts said China will continue its pursuit of a stable and healthy development of the property market this year, and emphasized that homes are for living and not for speculative investment.
“Tightening policies for the residential market are spreading to third- and fourth-tier cities, as more than 40 cities have published over 50 macro control policies since this year,” Zhang said.
Premier Li Keqiang announced earlier this month that the country is also steadily pushing for the legislation of a property tax this year, which experts expect to be completed by 2020.
China will press ahead with the development of a longterm rental market and implement more measures to stabilize housing prices, Minister of Housing and UrbanRural Development Wang Menghui said on Monday.
“The property market has remained stable, as the price rise has effectively slowed down and the market expectations show positive signs ahead,” he said on the sidelines of the ongoing 13th National People’s Congress.
“China will continue its efforts to build an effective price control mechanism to ensure the healthy development of the real estate market,” Wang said. “We will encourage the rental market and speed up the transformation of shanty towns.”
A total of 51 State-owned leasing companies have been established in 12 trial cities to date, and 30 percent of the new land supply will be allocated for rental housing, as well as housing with shared ownership by 2020, Wang was quoted as saying by the CCTV on Sunday.
Last month a number of major cities in China made progress in developing a longterm rental market. Beijing, for example, will choose houses within one kilometer of bus and tube stations or industrial zones as rental properties to make people’s daily commute more convenient, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Land and Resources said last month.
On Feb 4, Xu Liyi, mayor of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, said the city will ensure 30 percent of new commercial houses be rental property by the end of this year.
Last month, Wuhan, a city in Central China, said it aimed to create 30,000 rooms of over 1 million square meters for rental purposes by the end of this year.
“The long-term rental market will usher new development in 2018 as the country will continue to support it by issuing favorable policies,” said a report on the Chinese rental market in February, released by China Index Academy, one of the country’s largest independent property research organizations. “It will also help related companies to grow and push the market forward.”
The capital market also responded actively to the country’s call to develop the long-term rental market.
Last month, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange approved 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) worth of rental housing through the real estate investment trusts initiated by Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd, a Guangdong-based real estate developer.
It marked the country’s first REIT in the rental market and set an example as a financing tool for the companies in the same business, the China Index Academy report said.