Govt to keep home prices in check

The Shanghai Municipal People's Government will continue to carry out policies such as the mortgage and home purchase restrictions to maintain stable housing prices in 2014, the city's mayor said Thursday at a press conference to close the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress (SMPC) this year.

The real estate control policy, promulgated last November, has had the effects of decreasing the total real estate transaction volume for two consecutive months and lowering the growth rate of home prices, Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong said.

To maintain the stability of home prices in the city, the government will continue to increase the supply of land allocated for residential development and will try its best to build housing for low-income residents.

Along with increasing supply in the local real estate market, the government will step up construction of low-income housing for those who cannot afford to buy a home on the open market, the mayor said.

Since 2008, Shanghai has built 940,000 subsidized housing units and supplied 50,000 public rental housing units.

About 97,000 households in Shanghai have taken advantage of low-income rental housing, Yang said.

The municipal government also remains committed to accelerating the construction of high quality and accessible infrastructure around recently built large residential communities.

At the city level, subsidies for the construction of infrastructure projects in these areas increased to 12.2 billion yuan ($2 billion), up from last year's initial budget of 9.7 billion yuan.

The government is also planning to complete 35 such infrastructure projects this year, down from 40 projects last year.

To tackle the recurring problem of group renting, Yang said the city will increase the number of available public rental housing units. Another way is to improve the self-management of home owners.