China’s northern city of Hohhot has waived checks limiting the number of homes each resident is allowed to own, becoming the first in the country to ease government policies to rein in real-estate prices.
The provincial capital of Inner Mongolia will also allow non-Hohhot residents to buy homes in the city, it said in a statement on the local housing authority’s Web site yesterday. More than 40 cities have limited the number of homes that each family can buy and banned purchases by non-locals since 2011.
“Relaxing home-purchase restrictions in those less affluent cities is inevitable,” said Dai Fang, a property analyst at Zheshang Securities Co (浙商證券) in Shanghai. “There will be more cities following suit. The central government won’t need to worry about price rebounds as long as they have those biggest cities under control.”
China’s four-year efforts to rein in property prices have included home-purchase restrictions and higher mortgages for buying residential properties. The nation’s real-estate industry, facing a surplus of empty units and slowing prices, has become a drag on the world’s second-largest economy.
Hohhot said it will no longer request buyers to show ownership proof of home purchases. Existing home buyers will also be eligible for the easing of limits, the city clarified in the statement yesterday.
Hohhot became the first city to relax such measures, according to realtor Centaline Group.
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