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Shanghai Residents Take to Loans for Housing
Residents in Shanghai, the largest Chinese city, like the idea of buying houses with loans, according to a new survey.
Their change in attitude came after the government carried out housing reforms and banks started to provide property loans, revealed the sample survey of 1,000 people conducted by the Shanghai branch of the People's Bank of China.
The survey found that Shanghai residents no longer wait for the government to allocate housing as the government's housing reforms are progressing, and have realized that it's better for them to buy flats on the commercial market.
Eighty percent of the respondents said that they want to buy houses for themselves, 10 percent said they want to buy houses for their children or parents, while the rest consider the home-buying an investment.
"This shows that many citizens believe that the housing market is developing well as the national macro-economic situation is improving," the survey said.
The majority of those questioned said they intend to buy two- room or three-room flats with a floor space between 60 and 140 square meters, or formerly-occupied residences.
Some 10 percent of the respondents said they would like to buy houses of more than 140 square meters.
The survey showed that Shanghai residents' ability to afford housing prices has increased in recent years.
A quarter of the respondents said they are able to buy a flat priced between 110,000 and 200,000 yuan (between 13,000 and 24,000 US dollars); 40 percent said they can afford housing at prices ranging from 210,000 to 400,000 yuan.
Fourteen percent said they would choose a house costing between 410,000 and 500,000 yuan, and another 14 percent said they prefer houses in the 510,000-yuan price bracket.
Three percent said they can only afford houses of less than 100, 000 yuan, the survey said.
Surveyors found that Shanghai citizens have realized that bank loans would help them buy houses.
More than 30 percent of the citizens opt for a 11-15 year credit period, 20 percent of citizens choose a 6-10 year term, 15 percent choose a 16-20 year term.
Ninety percent of the citizens said they would accept loans between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan.
By March this year, Shanghai citizens had borrowed 34.4 billion yuan from banks to purchase houses.
In the first quarter alone, the commercial banks in the city provided home loans to 357,000 households. Nearly 30,000 houses covering 2.2 million square meters were sold.
According to the survey, Shanghai residents have praised the steps by various banks to lower credit limits for citizens who want to buy houses.
It also said many citizens from elsewhere who are working in Shanghai expressed the desire to settle down in the city by purchasing houses with bank loans.
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