Guangzhou said it will stick to housing cooling measures, a day after an official said it was mulling ways to withdraw
December 29, 2013 Leave a comment
Guangzhou Holds back Plans to Lift House Restrictions
12-26 12:15 Caijing
Guangzhou said it will stick to housing cooling measures, a day after an official said it was mulling ways to withdraw from such measures.
Local authorities in Guangzhou made a retreat yesterday from a statement that it would consider lifting government controls in the real estate sector, after It was found conflicting with a central government order to keep these policies in place.Instead, the local government said it will stick to the housing cooling measures as requested by the central government at a time when housing prices keep rallying in China, reported by the Beijing News.
Li Junfu, head of the local Municipal Bureau of Land and House Administration, said Tuesday the city was mulling ways to explore a long-term housing mechanism while stepping back from existing controlling measures including pricing caps and restrictions on purchases.
Housing Minister Jiang Weixin, however, asked on the same day local authorities in Beijing, Guagnzhou and Shanghai—where home prices rose the most – to “strictly implement” housing restrictions.
Asked by the Beijing News, an official with Guangzhou’s housing bureau said they would follow instructions from the central government. The official identified by his family name Gao added that the decision to keep housing restrictions in place next year does not conflict with Guagnzhou’s intention to explore ways to “build a long-term mechanism.”
Local governments should maintain the “consistency and stability” of existing controlling measures in 2014, Jiang told an annual national house meeting on December 24.
The meeting gathered not only housing officials in local provinces, but also deputy mayors in over 200 cities, reported the 21st Century Business Herald. An attendant told the newspaper that Jiang seemed to be “dissatisfied” over the results of the controlling measures.
Housing prices in the 66 of 70 monitored Chinese cities rose in November from the previous month, and 69 of them posted year-on-year gains. Beijing saw prices rose 21.1 percent year-on-year, and Shanghai witnessed a price increase of 21.9 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
Pressured by the central government, dozens of the cities have come out with their own property cooling measures, including increased down payment for second homes, higher threshold for home buyers and narrowed access to banks’ loans. But analysts doubt the local governments are just making perfunctory attempts to please the central government.
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