Wuhan scraps housing purchase limit

Wuhan, capital of China's Hubei province, announced on Tuesday to end housing purchase restrictions in a bid to revive local property market, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported.

In a notice released by the municipal government of Wuhan, home buyers no longer need to file proof of their hukou (household registration) or tax payment.

The city placed purchase limits on non-local residents and local second-home buyers amid a spate of other measures to cool off the then red-hot property market in January 2011.

Mortgage rate for first-time home buyers is between 1 and 1.05 times of the central bank's benchmark rate and that for a second housing with a minimum down payment of 70 percent, is above 1.1 times of the benchmark rate, reported Chutian Metropolis Daily.

More than 30 Chinese cities have either lifted or loosened the housing purchase limit this year. Only six others, including first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, still keep the policy.

China's four big State-owned banks are planning to reduce down payment requirement from second-time home buyers if they have paid back the mortgage loan, the Shanghai Securities News reported quoting internal sources on Tuesday.

The minimum down payment for first-time homebuyers is about 30 percent of the housing's market value, while 60 percent for mortgagers who wish to purchase a second home, according to Xinhua.

New-home prices fell month-on-month in August this year in 68 of the 70 major cities monitored by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the weakest housing data in the past three-and-a-half years since the government changed the way it compiled the figures.

In the first eight months of this year, national home sales dropped 10 percent by floor space over a year earlier and slumped 10.9 percent by value, the NBS said earlier.