South China's Guangdong Province has introduced a series of measures to slash the oversupply of housing in the province.

According to local sources, the measures include preferential tax treatment and the introduction of price ceilings for available apartments. Ordinary apartments completed before July 30, 1998 are exempted from operational and contractual taxes if they are sold in the period from August this year to December 2000 at stipulated ceiling prices.

Stockpiled open-market apartments will be exempted from miscellaneous administrative charges if they are sold at discounts, or will be charged lower administrative fees if they are sold as affordable housing.

In the meantime, the province has also decided to use three years in confiscating all land previously purchased to build real estate projects but so far still idle.

By late 1998, the volume of stockpiled open-market housing in Guangdong reached 11.72 million sq m, and the oversupply of housing is especially serious in the six provincial-level cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shantou, Jiangmen, Foshan and Zhuhai, according to local authorities.

These measures have proved effective. In Guangzhou, the provincial capital, 402,000 sq m of second-hand apartments were sold on the second-hand housing market in the first three months of the year, up 38.6 percent over the same period last year, at a volume of 1.76 billion yuan.

Guangzhou was one of the first Chinese cities to introduce housing reform. A total of 360,000 urban households in the city now own their own residences. (Xinhua)