China's housing authority urges for enhanced efforts to ensure housing delivery to homebuyers

China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) and the National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly held a national video conference on promoting delivery of the stalled housing projects, during which the authorities called for expanding the scope of the “white list” to ensure all compliant developers are “included in the list as they should be,” according to a statement seen on the website of MOHURD on Wednesday.

The “white list” refers to a mechanism to ensure that eligible real estate projects get support in financing and sufficient development loans. 

The conference is part of the country’s ramped-up efforts to advance the housing project delivery work and stabilize the real estate market, following a series of major pro-growth macro policies rolled out by the policymakers to support the property market in late September. 

The meeting stressed the importance of ensuring urban housing delivery, which is a key task to facilitate the stable and sound development of housing market as well as an effective measure to fend off property sector risk and promote the stabilization of the overall property market. 

“The current stage is a crucial window of opportunity to advance housing works. It is also a crucial period to winning the battle of ensuring housing delivery,” the meeting noted. 

It stressed that Chinese localities should step up efforts in the review, promotion, and problem-solving of projects on the “white list,” as well as facilitate bank loans distribution, to effectively meet the reasonable financing needs of real estate projects.

With regards to financial institutions, the meeting called for them to establish and improve green channels and timely release loans based on housing projects’ progress, the meeting noted. 

China’s housing market has shown some positive signs of improvement during the week-long National Day holidays, as homebuyer confidence was revived by a new package of the stimulus measures announced by the authorities. 

On September 24, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, unveiled a new package of monetary measures, led by reductions in existing mortgage rates, in a bid to boost the country’s real estate market and fire up consumer spending.

Between October 1 and noon of October 3, the number of on-site inquiries for new homes in Beijing rose 92.5 percent on a yearly basis, and new home subscriptions nearly doubled. And inquiries for used second-homes in Beijing jumped by 104.1 percent, according to a report seen on the MOHURD’s website. The number of on-site inquiries for new property projects in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province, rose nearly 200 percent during the same period.