“China’s largest cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, tightened rules on home purchases after the nation asked local governments to step up efforts to cool the property market.
Beijing, the capital, banned single-person households from buying more than one residence while Shanghai prohibited banks from giving credit to third-home buyers, according to the local administration websites. The two cities will also enforce a 20 percent tax on capital gains from property sales.
“This will help calm people’s panic about home prices,” said Yi Xianrong, a Beijing-based researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which advises the Cabinet. “At the same time, restrictions on home purchases don’t change the fundamental demand, and it seems the new measures in Beijing are aimed more at short-term problems rather than long-term healthy development of the property market.”
Home prices in the capital jumped 5.9 percent from a year earlier in February, the biggest increase in two years, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said March 18. Costs across the country rose 160 percent in 1998-2011 after ownership passed into private hands, government data show.
The city administration of Shanghai, where new home prices in February rose 3.4 percent from a year earlier, also said it will increase down-payment requirements and interest rates for second-home mortgages. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin and Jinan have also published details on the housing curbs.
