By Wang Ruimin, Shao Ting, Deng Yusong and Niu Sanyuan, Research Team on “The Development of Rental Housing: Major Issues, Approaches and Policy Options”, Institute of Market Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.101, 2021 (Total 6166) 2021-4-26

Abstract: As China moves to the stage of urbanization featured by the growth of city clusters, rental housing demand in big cities with constant population inflow has become quite strong. The rental housing group mainly includes rural migrant workers and college graduates with a total of 100 million and 60 million respectively, with a generally limited affordability to pay housing rent, though the latter have an evidently strong financial ability to cope with housing rent issue than the former. Urban families who already have their own homes may also have rental needs due to working location changes or children’s schooling. Rental housing is chiefly a temporary demand for a transitional period. With the growth of people’s income, the rental housing group has developed increased demand for high-quality and complete residential houses. To meet such demand, it is necessary to bring into full play the role of the market, make good use of available housing to meet demand of new citizens, encourage the construction of rental housing projects with low-cost land, and improve the quality of rental housing units in urban rundown areas and old residential areas in a bid to ensure a diversified and differentiated rental housing supply to satisfy people’s needs.

Keywords: rental housing, scale of the group, features, changes