NEW rules to restrict home purchases have affected at least 3,000 contracts in Shenzhen, industry insiders say.
The new rules, effective Oct. 1, limit the number of properties one family can buy to two for residents with Shenzhen hukou or one for residents without Shenzhen hukou.
This means that buyers who don t meet the conditions won t be able to buy even if they have signed contracts.
Because of the new restrictions, about 20 percent of the recent contracts will not be implemented, said Wang Shijie, marketing director of Centaline Shenzhen, one of the city s largest real estate agencies.
Wang estimated the number of affected contracts to be about 3,000. Ye Shiyu, general manager of Taskin Real Estate, estimated the number to be even bigger.
There was a red-hot housing market in Shenzhen in late September. On Sept. 30, 477 new homes, up 165 percent from 92 units on Sept. 1, were sold. On the same day, a total of 961 pre-owned homes were sold, nearly double the daily average in September.
A real estate agent who declined to be named said Shenzhen developers would lose hundreds of millions of yuan if the contracts were invalidated. Buyers could lose tens of millions of yuan in deposits.
Worried about the potential losses, developers are seeking help from the city real estate association to press for changes to the rules.
He Lifang, a lawyer who specializes in real estate, said she had received many inquiries from home sellers who wanted to keep the deposits paid by buyers who, under the new rules, could no longer buy the properties.
One of my clients has signed a contract and received a 200,000 yuan (US$29,980) deposit from a homebuyer. But now the buyer cannot complete the contract and wants the deposit back, said He.
The lawyer said that the rules took precedent. The contracts should be abandoned and deposits should be returned, she said.
As long as housing prices don t fall, most of the contracts would be honored, said Wang Shijie. Affected buyers can buy the homes in the name of their parents or relatives, he said. (Helen Deng)
