Affordable homes set to climb
CHINA will complete the construction of more affordable housing units next
year and will support citizens’ “reasonable” demand for new homes by
prioritizing loans to first-home buyers, the housing ministry said
yesterday.
China plans to begin constructing or renovating at least 7 million housing
units for low-income groups next year, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural
Development Jiang Weixin told a national meeting yesterday.
The planned figure is lower than this year’s 10 million units, whose
construction had all started by the end of October, the ministry said earlier.
The total number of affordable housing units under construction this year has
exceeded 15 million, as only 330,000 homes of the 5.9 million units started in
2010 have been completed so far this year.
But Jiang said more units should be completed next year than this year as
construction should be finished on 5 million housing units in 2012.
The affordable housing project, along with purchase curbs and tougher rules
on down payment and mortgage rates, is part of China’s efforts to combat soaring
home prices in the past two years.
The latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed the
national campaign to combat soaring house prices was now at a critical stage
with both prices and transactions dropping.
Last month, 49 of 70 major cities reported monthly falls in new home prices,
against 17 in September and 34 in October, the bureau said.
In the first 11 months of this year, new home sales, excluding
government-funded affordable housing, rose 7.5 percent from a year ago to 800
million square meters across the country, a drop from an annual growth of 9
percent recorded between January and October, according to latest research
released by the China Index Academy.
But amid the tight regulatory outlook, Jiang pledged that Chinese people’s
reasonable demand for homes will be supported with differentiated mortgage and
tax policies, and priority will be given to meeting the first-time buyers’ need
for loans.
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