Foreign Property News | Posted by Si Thu Aung
The eastern Chinese city of Nantong, with a population of more than 7 million, has introduced a new rule to ban near-term resale of certain cheap homes in the latest step by authorities in the country to curb property market speculation.
On Wednesday the government of Nantong, near Shanghai and a number of other port cities, said buyers who have bought new homes at prices much lower than the market average are not allowed to resell their properties for a period of five years.
China has clamped down on property speculation since 2016 to stop home prices from overheating.
But with the pace of China’s economic growth slowing, policymakers are aware of the need to avoid wholesale squashing of the property market – a pillar for the broader economy.
Beijing has been calling instead for the adoption of city-based policies to ensure market stability, Reuters said.
China’s economic growth is expected to fall below the psychological level of 6 per cent next year, according to a forecast by Fitch Ratings in a report earlier this month.
The rating firm also predicted no-gain in home prices in top-tier cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen over the next two years.
The latest curb in Nantong follows a recent move by the housing bureau in Baoan district to halt the sale of all homes within a 1,200-unit housing estate in Shenzhen to halt “vicious speculation activity,” the South China Morning Post reported last week.
The directive followed the posting of a WeChat message on December 13, in which a group claiming to be the “homeowners’ committee” urged all residents whose flats were on the market to raise the asking price to a minimum of 55,000 yuan per square metre.
The authority warned that such remarks “severely deviated from the central government’s message that homes are for living in, not for speculation.”
Additional reporting by SCMP Insert OPTIONAL Index Image, Main story image will be used if not supplied.
Ref: Property Report
