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Beijing cuts rates, taxes to boost housing

By Yang Guang (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-10-22 21:29

To rejuvenate the housing sector, the Chinese government also said last week that the country needed to build more affordable housing. To that end, Beijing may launch a 1 trillion yuan fund to build affordable houses for poorer citizens, the Chinese-language China Business News reported on Wednesday.

As many as 18 Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Xi'an, have announced detailed policies to boost their respective property markets, which have seen at least four months of consecutive drops in housing prices.

A view of apartment buildings in Shanghai, May 18, 2008. [Xinhua]

In September, the housing price in southern city of Shenzhen plunged by 5.3 percent from a month ago.

Chinese economists have cautioned that a worsening slump in the real estate market in China would not only undermine the healthy growth of the economy, but also put the country's financial system at risk.

The worsening financial crisis, now sweeping the world and hardening the lives of many, originated from the subprime debacle in mid 2007 in the United States. Because of the sudden bust of a 10-year American housing boom, a rocketing number of American homeowners were unable to pay mortgages, and the banks were troubled by mountain-high bad debts.

To prevent the same scenario from happening, the 18 Chinese cities have resorted to measures, including doling out subsidies to private homebuyers, unprecedented since former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji launched privatization policies of housing; cutting taxes on housing deeds, and even giving permanent urban residents permits to lure outside homebuyers, in Hangzhou's case.

Shanghai raised the mortgage ceiling of the housing accumulation fund by one-fifth, into which employees and employers deposit money every month in return for lower mortgage rates, a move expected to encourage city residents to apply for a larger housing loan.

Like the United States and Europe, China also witnessed a sizzling real estate sector since 2000, led by Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other relatively developed coastal cities, that benefited from the reform and opening-up policies. Buoyed by increasing incomes, a rising number of well-off urban residents purchased their own homes, in addition to cars and other luxuries, and become China's middle-class.

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