Beijing to continue home purchase curbs to ensure sustainable development

Beijing will continue its curbs on multiple home purchases despite many other cities having recently announced to loosen restrictions, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Development said on Thursday.

Citing an unnamed source from the commission, news portal people.cn reported Thursday that in order to achieve a sustainable development of the capital city, the existing curbing policies will continue.

Media reports said Wednesday that a real estate think tank had submitted a proposal to the Beijing municipal government on abolishing property purchase restrictions, including suggestions to lower taxes and relax requirements for home-buyers without a Beijing hukou (household registration).

The source refuted the reports, and revealed that a new standard on regular apartments in Beijing, which lowers the threshold for apartments that could enjoy preferential tax policies and went into effect on Wednesday, has already reduced tax burdens for buyers of small and medium-sized apartments, according to people.cn.

Home transactions amounted to just 538 units in Beijing during the week-long National Day holidays, falling around 40 percent from the same period a year ago, according to data from Beijing-based real estate consultancy Yahao on Thursday.

To deal with a downward pressure on the real estate market, many cities have canceled their property purchase limits. Currently, only five cities - four first-tier cities and Sanya in South China's Hainan Province, are still maintaining home purchase limits.

Local governments are also adopting policies to prop up the property market. Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang Province announced Wednesday that first-time home-buyers with a university diploma attained in the past 10 years can enjoy a subsidy of up to 1 percent of the house price from the local government, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday.

But experts generally believe that it is not very likely for first-tier cities like Beijing to loosen the restrictions in short term.