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Guangzhou to sell first affordable houses

By Zhao Tingting (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-11-12 17:27

The government of Guangzhou plans to put its first batch of 2,145 economically affordable houses on the market late this month, said China Business News, citing the city's housing security department.

Guangzhou has been programming a blueprint for its housing security system. It aims to resolve housing problems for the 2,727 newly-listed destitute households without properties within one year, and the 77,177 registered urban low-income households before 2012, said the department on Tuesday.

For destitute households without properties, 500 households have been allocated low-rent houses and 1,300 will be provided with low-rent houses or rental subsidiaries before the end of the year. The housing problems of the other 1,427 are expected to be solved before the end of next June, according to the department.

For low-income families, the government will create new models to build more economically affordable houses. Four economically affordable housing projects have been completed with a construction area of 654,000 sq m, and make up of 7,616 units. Other projects under construction, with a construction area of 1.25 million sq m, aim to offer over 10,000 units in the following one or two years.

In addition, it is reported that the Guangzhou public housing fund planned to raise credit ceilings to 500,000 yuan ($73,171) and 800,000 yuan for individuals and households respectively, from the previous limits of 400,000 yuan and 650,000 yuan.

Lifting the credit ceiling of public housing fund will alleviate purchasing pressures for some employees, said the report, citing industry experts. Over 2 million employees in Guangzhou are covered by the public housing fund and most of them prefer to use credit from the public housing fund when purchasing houses.