More Chinese cities further restrict housing purchases to cool market

Home buyers preview real estate building models in Beijing. (File photo/Chinanews.com)

Authorities in the eastern Chinese cities of Nanjing and Qingdao on Thursday unveiled more steps that will restrict housing purchases and cool the property market.

Nanjing announced that starting from Thursday, people without a local "hukou" (permanent residence permits) and anyone who owns at least one house in the three districts of Liuhe, Lishui and Gaochun will not qualify to buy a house. In the main urban districts, local people who have at least two houses will be banned from buying another home.

The prices of new housing increased by 37.3 percent year on year in January in Nanjing, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Purchase restrictions have also been introduced in Qingdao. The city announced that starting Thursday, people without local "hukou" must provide a record that they have paid 12 months worth of income tax and social security payments in the last two years if they want to buy a house in the urban area. Non-locals who already have at least one home or can not provide such records will not qualify to buy homes in the urban area.

The prices of new housing in the city rose 13.2 percent year on year, or 0.1 percent month on month.

From March, dozens of second-tier cities and cities neighboring Beijing and Shanghai have restricted housing purchases to cool property markets.

In the first two months of 2017, the investment in China's real estate market rose 8.9 percent year on year to more than 985 billion yuan (143 billion U.S. dollars), and housing sales jumped 26 percent from the same period of 2016 to over 1 trillion yuan, the bureau said.

Analysts said that the investment and growth figures had beaten expectations.

"Further tightening measures were expected in more cities including first-tier cities in March," said Yan Yuejin, a housing market analyst.