China's housing market picks up on bundle of stimulus measures

BEIJING, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- When Niu Motian's friends were enjoying gourmet dishes and showing off their new clothes during the National Day holiday, the white-collar worker in Beijing was busy doing her homework before buying something much more valuable.

"I believe it is time to own a home now," said Niu, who, despite looking at apartments since last year, remained undecided until days before the week-long vacation that ended on Monday.

On the radar of the 30-year-old was a new residential compound located outside the fourth ring road in southern Beijing. A property agent told her that more than 10 of the project's apartments were sold on Oct. 1 alone.

"Housing prices have now dropped to a comparatively reasonable level, and mortgage interest rates have been lowered," Niu said, voicing her determination to seize this opportunity.

Like many others, Niu was incentivized by a string of stimulus measures unveiled before the National Day holiday in a bid to prop up the sagging real estate market, a pillar industry underpinning the world's second-largest economy.

These measures, rolled out by central government departments and many local governments, have reduced financial burdens on home buyers, relaxed or even eliminated restrictions constraining property transactions, making the past holiday a genuine "golden week" for housing developers and agencies.

Real estate agency Centaline Property estimated that during the holiday, more than 5,000 pre-owned homes were sold in Beijing, rocketing by over 150 percent. New home sales tripled from the same period last year to nearly 2,000 units.

In Shanghai, sales of pre-owned homes on Oct. 1-6 multiplied from the same period last year to 1,537 units. Potential home buyers flocked to visit new residential compounds. The other two first-tier cities -- Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- also witnessed a boom in the market.

In Hangzhou and Nanjing, two typical second-tier cities in east China, Xinhua saw that sales halls of multiple property projects were packed with potential buyers during the holiday.

During the National Day holiday, events were held in over 130 cities across China to promote commercial housing sales and explain policies to the public. The number of visitors to most of the participating housing projects increased by more than 50 percent, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

This array of stimulus measures came after the Sept. 26 meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee underlined efforts to "reverse the downturn of and stabilize the real estate market." The clear signal from China's leadership has served as a silver bullet to U-turn flagging market sentiment.

Li Yujia, chief researcher at the Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center, expects this wave of impactful government support to cause a recovery in home sales.

"With the real estate market stabilizing in first-tier cities, the market in smaller cities around these metropolises will follow suit," Li predicted.

On the back of the stimulus package, housing prices in key cities are likely to stabilize, and the real estate market could be more dynamic in the fourth quarter of this year, said Chen Wenjing, director of policy research at the China Index Academy.

"To further stabilize property sales and home prices, there is still room to refine restrictive policies, and second-tier and smaller cities could raise subsidies for housing purchases," Chen said.