Group hukou home buyers in the clear

Group hukou home buyers in the clear

• Source: Global Times
• [09:50 March 09 2011]
• Comments

By Li Yanhui

Fengtai district will allow group hukou holders, not including college students, to purchase apartments after all, China National Radio (CNR) reported Tuesday. Previous reports that the district would suspend such purchases by group hukou holders - mainly college students and State and high-tech enterprise employees from outside Beijing - prompted public speculation that the policy might be expanded beyond Fengtai.

A Fengtai district Real Estate Transaction Center director surnamed Meng told CNR last week that the new real estate policy did not clearly define if group hukou-holding college students were qualified to buy apartments, so they suspended housing ownership transfer procedures to wait for the municipal authorities' opinions.

A transaction center employee told CNR on Monday that the center was re-opened to group hukou holders this week, but that college and post-graduate students still are not included.

An employee with the Fengtai District Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development who would not give his name told the Global Times that they did not make the local policy on housing purchases but were only following the municipal-level commission's instructions.

Calls to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development were not answered Tuesday.

CNR reported that several calls to real estate transaction centers in Chaoyang, Tongzhou and the former Chongwen district, among others, found that they were still processing transfer procedures for group hukou holders.

"We got confirmation from the local authorities about the policy and re-opened our business to group hukou holders starting Monday," said store manager Yu Peng of Beijing Anxin Ruide Real Estate Broker Company's Fengtai branch.