NE China city eases home buying restrictions

Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, announced in April that residents of five neighboring smaller cities can enjoy the same rights as Nanning dwellers to buy homes.

Previously, non-locals needed to present documents of paying local income taxes for at least one year to be able to buy a home.

Wuxi, a third-tier city in East China's Jiangsu province, announced that migrant workers who have a stable job and buy a home bigger than 60 square meters from May 1 can get its hukou. The city earlier set a hukou threshold of purchasing a home larger than 70 square meters.

Nobody's home in 10.2m apartments, survey finds

April sales adding fuel to fears of property bubble

Home prices began to rise steeply from the second half of 2009, partly fueled by record bank lending. The soaring prices led to complaints from ordinary Chinese as well as fears of a housing bubble.

Since 2010, governments at all levels have taken various measures to regulate the runaway market. Many cities including Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanning set restrictions on home purchases including higher down payments and imposing caps on the number of apartments a family can buy.

Yang Hongxu, deputy head of E-House China R&D Institute, said restrictions are temporary measures to stabilize home prices.

Policies are now unnecessary as the property market is cooling down nationwide, he said.

Yang said property development plays a big role in supporting local governments' fiscal revenue and economic growth. Under current downward pressure of economic growth, local authorities still have incentives to ease home purchase restrictions.

More cities are likely to loosen their restrictions on home buying in the future, he said.

Researchers with Centaline Property said although scrapping restrictions is a big trend, the short-term effect may not be satisfying, since the current cooling down of the property market has mostly resulted from some cities' oversupply of houses and rapid growth of home prices.

Yang Hongxu said currency and mortgage policies play a more important role than purchase restrictions in terms of stimulating the property market.