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Shanghai to Announce Property Market Curbs in Second Half, Oriental Says
Shanghai will announce tightening measures for the real estate market in the second half of the year, the Oriental Morning Post reported, citing Zhou Bo, head of Shanghai’s National Development and Reform Commission.
The east China city aims to curb property speculation, said the Chinese-language newspaper, citing Zhou’s comments to the local legislature yesterday. It didn’t give details of the measures. The official said Shanghai’s government will also stabilize supply of land and new homes, according to the report.
China’s property prices in 70 cities dropped 0.1 percent in June from a month earlier as measures including higher down payments and interest rates on second mortgages announced since mid-April cooled the market. Shanghai submitted a plan to levy property taxes on homes to the central government for review, the China Securities Journal reported May 31.
“Shanghai’s measures at least won’t be more strict than other cities’ policies that have already come out,” said Dai Fang, a Shanghai-based analyst at Zheshang Securities Co. “The overall economic outlook is more pessimistic than in March or the start of the year, when the government was still trying to avoid overheating.”
China’s economy expanded 10.3 percent in the second quarter, slowing from the previous three months.
Shares Drop
An index tracking 34 real estate firms traded in Shanghai fell 0.8 percent as of 11:25 a.m. local time today, extending this year’s loss to 22 percent. China Vanke Co., the nation’s biggest listed developer, dropped 0.7 percent.
Beijing restricted residents to buying only one new home starting from May, making itself the first city to implement a policy authorized by the State Council. Shanghai is working on rules that will be “more strict” than the central government’s to cool down the local market, Xinhua News Agency reported on May 28, citing Chen Qiwei, a spokesman for the city’s government.
The central government this year has also curbed bank lending for third homes, tightened pre-sale rules for developers and cracked down on land hoarding.
The rapid gains in Shanghai’s housing prices have been curbed, with new-home sales dropping 36 percent by floor area in the first half from a year earlier, Zhou said, according to the newspaper today.
Second-hand home prices in the city were 42 percent higher last month than a year earlier, while those in Beijing had risen 75 percent, according to real estate research institute China Index Academy.
To contact the reporter on this story: Huiwen Yang in Shanghai at hyang66@bloomberg.net; Dingmin Zhang in Beijing at dzhang14@bloomberg.net
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