China to set up integrated property registration

A plan to establish an integrated registration system for immovable property decided on at a State Council executive meeting late Wednesday will pave the way for the expansion of property tax nationwide, analysts said Thursday.

A statement issued on -government websites after the meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang stated that current property registration responsibilities, which are scattered among different government departments, will be integrated under one department.

The statement also said that the government will set up a unified information management platform, which will enable information regarding transaction, approval, and -registration of immovable property to be shared among different government departments.

Immovable property -refers to land, real estate property, grasslands and maritime space.

All registered information about immovable property should be open to the public.

Analysts believe the integration of the immovable property registration system will speed up expanding the long-awaited property tax nationwide.

"Currently, one of the -major obstacles for expansion of the property tax nationwide is a lack of a unified property -registration system," Yang -Shaofeng, general manager of Beijing Lianda Sifang Real -Estate Consultancy, told the Global Times Thursday.

The property tax might be based initially upon the per capita living space of each family member. However without a national database of properties and owners, it would be very complicated to calculate the -exact area if for example, a Beijing resident owning an apartment in Beijing buys units in other provinces and regions, Yang explained.

In 2011, China began a property tax pilot program in Shanghai and Chongqing.

While this type of tax is broadly applied in many Western countries, China has not expanded this tax to more cities.

This has prompted many Chinese nationwide to continue buying residences as a -major form of investment, which has led to rampant home price rise and a boom in the real estate market.

"Home prices will decline at once if the new polices [an integrated registration system] are executed this year," Pan Shiyi, chairman of real estate developer Soho China, was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying Thursday.

Shares of the major property developers slumped Thursday due to tightened regulation on the immovable property.

China Merchants Property Development Co saw its share prices decline by 4.02 percent Thursday.

"The integration for the immovable property registration system, which is similar to population census, will be a base for other long-term measures of controlling the property market," Zhang Dawei, research director at the Beijing office of Centaline China Real Estate, told the Global Times Thursday.

Zhang also noted that supplies of existing homes will increase if the property tax is expanded nationwide, since this would lead some owners of multiple homes to sell off their homes.