China's housing ministry moves to stabilize city real estate

BEIJING - China's housing authorities on Thursday held a regulatory talk with officials in five cities and urged them to stabilize the property markets in the wake of rapid increases in local home prices.

Ni Hong, vice-minister of housing and urban-rural development, said the cities of Yinchuan, Xuzhou, Jinhua, Quanzhou, and Huizhou should enhance property market regulation and monitoring and keep its development stable and sound.

The prices of residential housing and land have increased too fast in these five cities in the first half of this year, and market expectations have become unstable.

Ni asked officials of the five cities to uphold the principle that "houses are for living in, not for speculation" and refrain from using the property sector as a means of short-term economic stimulus.

Ni also urged local governments to speed up efforts in establishing a link mechanism between housing and land prices, developing affordable rental housing, and making two-way adjustments in supply and demand to regulate the market order.