A SENIOR Chinese housing official said Friday that it remained difficult to regulate China s real estate market as local governments were too reliant on revenue from land sales.
Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said a rising housing demand due to urbanization, limited investment channels at home and inflows of international speculative capital also made cooling the property market difficult.
Housing prices rising too fast could lead to an asset bubble, affecting financial stability, economic development and social stability, Qiu said.
Qiu said that tempering the real estate market required a policy toolkit, which should not only include policies in land managing, taxation and financial areas, but also include an increase in affordable housing supplies.
Domestic media has reported that the Central Government will carry out a nationwide property inspection on the implementation of the government s real estate measures.
The inspection will focus on local government efforts to ensure land supply, construction of affordable housing and the clean-up of idle land parcels, reports said last week.
The government wants to check out the market before setting up next year s real estate plans, said Liu Kun, a property analyst at Great Wall Securities based in Shenzhen. The construction of low-income affordable homes to increase supply will be the government s focus in the future.
The Chinese Government has introduced a series of measures this year to crack down on property speculation and rein in house prices. These measures include suspending mortgage loans for third-home purchasers and raising down-payments.
Property prices in 70 major Chinese cities rose 8.6 percent year on year in October, the lowest year-on-year increase in 2010. However, on a month-on-month basis, housing prices rose 0.2 percent from September.
(SD-Agencies)
