The Chinese central government has summoned senior officials from cities around the country to reiterate the importance of maintaining local real estate market control measures.
On 17 August the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development (MOHURD) convened meetings with senior officials from five cities including Haikou, Sanya, Yantai, Yichang and Yangzhou, demanding that they strictly clean up and address the problems of property hoarding and housing speculation, as well as contain increases in home prices.
The move comes just after the Chinese politburo emphasised the need to “strictly contain gains in housing prices” at the end of July, signalling that the local real estate market controls first launched at the outset of 2017 are set continue.
Yan Yuejin (严跃进), an analyst from the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, said to The People’s Daily that the five cities that sent officials to meet with MOHURD had all seen sizeable rises in housing prices in July, despite it traditionally being an off-peak month for the market.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate that in July Haikou, Yangzhou Yantai, Yichang and Sanya saw on-month gains in housing prices of 2.3%, 2.8%, 2.9%, 2.9% and 3.7% respectively.
This compares to on-month increases of 0.2%, 0.6% and 0.5% for Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as a decline of 0.1 percentage point for Shanghai.
Zhang Bo (张波), chief analyst with 58 Anjuke, said that the meetings with officials from these five cities is just the beginning, with MOHURD set to give “focused attention” to any cities that see excessively rapid gains in housing prices.
July saw the release of a record number of local government real estate control policies in China, while since the start of August over 25 new policies have been unveiled.
