Housing eyes stability, growth on policy support

While effecting different measures to suit each city, commercial banks are encouraged to meet new city-dwellers' reasonable demand for home mortgages and to make it more convenient for them to apply for mortgages and repay debts, said a notice jointly released on March 4 by the People's Bank of China, the nation's central bank, and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.

The decision would help solve new city-dwellers' living problems with credit support and unlock the rational home-buying demand of up to 300 million new city-dwellers, Chen said.

The fine-tuned regulations also reflect the effectiveness of the sector's deleveraging, Xie said.

According to CBRE, representative housing enterprises' sales revenue in the first two months of this year slowed about 30 percent or more year-on-year, while the money they spent on land acquisition more than halved.

Differentiated measures in cities would help stabilize home prices, land prices and market expectations and ensure a soft landing of the industry, experts said.

"We believe the property market will gradually stabilize in the second half of this year," said Xie.

To ensure long-term smooth functioning of the property market, China is looking to allow people to live in a place in tune with the property's affordability, be it a self-owned property, rented apartment or government-subsidized rental housing.

As the Government Work Report said, China will explore new models of housing development and encourage both rental housing and home purchases. The country will move faster to develop the long-term rental market and promote the construction of government-subsidized housing.

This aspect of the report, Chen said, shows the central government attaches considerable importance to leased homes, particularly subsidized rental housing.

"It's trendy for the home market to embrace both rentals and purchases. Living in a rented home offers an option for the younger generation and new city-dwellers in large cities where home prices are usually high," said Yao of JLL China.

In order to effectively ensure new city-dwellers' basic living needs, cities should work hard in terms of the development and standardization of their rental housing market, said Yao. He also suggested conventional property developers should seize rental housing development opportunities to ensure their business transitions to stability amid a challenging environment.

Xu Xiaole, chief analyst with the Beike Research Institute, which is part of KE Holdings Inc, a Chinese platform for housing transactions and services, said he foresees substantial opportunities emerging during the development of the subsidized rental housing market, long-term rental housing, and the renovation of old urban residential flats.

According to the Beike Research Institute, China's expected new supply of more than 2 million units of subsidized rental housing this year will entail a total investment of 280 billion yuan ($44 billion).

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), urban renovated home projects will benefit 35 million households, and the renovation scale is projected to reach 700 million square meters by 2030 with a total investment of about 600 billion yuan.

Jiang Ziyi contributed to this story.