Desire to buy home drops to record
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-06-08 08:35

Chinese residents' willingness to buy private homes has dropped to an all-time low, in the wake of the government's macro-control measures.

This conclusion was made by the People's Bank of China, the central bank, in its latest survey based on the country's 20,000 urban depositors in 50 major cities.

The results, which were posted on the bank's website yesterday, found that 19.1 per cent of urban residents planned to buy private homes in the coming three months.

This means the number of residents planning to buy homes dropped 2.9 percentage points from the previous quarter and 2.2 percentage points from the same period a year ago an all-time low.

According to the survey, 11 per cent of urban residents said they had saved money for the purpose of buying a private home or refurbishing, a decline of 0.4 percentage point from the previous quarter and 0.8 percentage point from the same period a year ago another all-time low.

The government's macro-control measures have gradually had an impact on the overheated real estate market, the central bank said. Real estate speculation has also been restricted.

To cool the sector, the central bank scrapped the preferential loan policy for mortgages in March, raising the interest rate on mortgages longer than five years by 20 basis points to 5.51 per cent.

The down payments for home-buyers in cities where the lenders believe real estate prices have been rising too fast were raised from 20 per cent to 30 per cent of total house prices.

On May 11, seven government departments, including the Ministry of Construction, Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission, announced eight detailed measures including tax policies and stricter land supply controls to strengthen macro-control of the real estate sector.

As of June 1, the government started to levy a business tax on the full earnings of home sales when owners sold their homes within two years of buying them.

The government also started to levy a tax on the difference between the selling and buying prices of non-ordinary residential housing, when owners sold them two years after purchase.

Qi Jingmei, a senior economist with the State Information Centre, said the measures had a great impact on residents' consumption behaviour.

"They expect home prices to decline and have adopted a wait-and-see attitude towards home purchasing," she said.

In Shanghai, house transactions have already begun to drop, while supply has increased.

Wang Zhao, a senior researcher with the State Council Development Research Centre, said the eight measures, which gave equal emphasis on both home supply and demand, are beneficial to the healthy development of the real estate sector.

However, residents will continue to have a strong desire to buy private homes, because they dream of living better lives and the rapid pace of urbanization, according to Wang.

"If the raft of measures fails to keep real estate development on track, the government may take further measures," he said.

For example, the central bank may further raise the housing loan interest rate.

For the long-term development of the country's real estate market, the government should normalize present taxes and fees and try to implement a unified real estate tax as early as possible, Wang said.

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