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Bloomberg
Shanghai, China’s financial hub, is putting in place new measures to curb a surge in property prices as part of the country’s latest push to ensure stable and healthy real estate development.
The new steps announced by the city’s housing commission include increasing land supply and forbidding price increases in new home pre-sales without approval. In addition, punishment will be increased for spreading rumors about the property market and violating laws, according to a statement posted on the commission’s website.
The curbs follow similar steps taken by more than a dozen Chinese cities this week and complement measures implemented earlier this year. New home sales in Shanghai dropped 44.5 percent in September compared to August, while prices rose 5.1 percent in the same period, property consultant Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co. said in an e-mailed statement October.
In March, the city’s government tightened approval criteria for non-resident homebuyers, raised down-payment requirements for some second homes and banned unregulated lending.
Cities that announced steps to contain house-price bubbles recently include both tier 1 and tier 2 cities such as Nanjing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Fuzhou. Most of them have imposed specific restrictions on mortgage and down-payment policies, and increased punitive measures for unlawful businesses and agencies involved in the realty market.
Residential home prices in China began to rise last year after the government eased curbs on property purchases in a bid to boost real estate investment and the People’s Bank of China loosened monetary policy.