The complete lifting of purchase restrictions is likely to lead to a sharp increase in the number of second-hand housing listings, and the more houses are sold, the more they are sold. Visual China / Figure
2024 is the 14th year of the implementation of the national property market purchase restriction policy, and this policy may come to an end this year.
On May 9, two major cities successively announced the lifting of purchase restrictions. In the morning, Hangzhou announced that it would no longer review the qualifications for buying houses in the city, and non-Hangzhou household registration personnel who had obtained legal property rights could apply to settle down. In the afternoon, Xi'an announced the complete cancellation of purchase restrictions and the optimization of notarization lottery measures.
As of May 10, only six places in the country are still implementing the purchase restriction policy.
There are a total of 31 second-tier cities in the country designated by the National Bureau of Statistics, and Southern Weekend found that since 2023, as many as 19 second-tier cities have lifted purchase restrictions. At present, even if Hainan and Tianjin have not completely withdrawn from the purchase restrictions, the settlement policy has also been relaxed, which is equivalent to a disguised relaxation of the purchase restrictions.
"Hangzhou's comprehensive liberalization (purchase restrictions) this time is more of a symbolic meaning, because it has been adjusted twice in the early stage, and it is basically completely liberalized." Zhang Dawei, chief analyst of Centaline Real Estate, told Southern Weekend that Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hainan and Tianjin, similar to Hangzhou, have entered a state of "semi-restricted purchase".
In the end, only Beijing and Shanghai remained. A number of interviewees judged that even if Beijing and Shanghai still maintain purchase restrictions, there is a high probability that there will be a loosening of policies this year.
The core of the policy is the easing of credit
Hangzhou and Xi'an have seen "10,000 people shake". In particular, Hangzhou has seen dozens of grand occasions of 10,000 people lottery, and is regarded as the most representative city in the domestic property market in the past decade.
Zhang Dawei once made statistics that in the past ten years, the land market and transaction market in Hangzhou have been the first in China. For example, the city's new housing single market has won the national triple crown, and the total transaction amount of second-hand housing is also the first in the country.
"It is recognized that Hangzhou is the first in the country to sell land, so it has always been a representative of the prosperity of China's real estate industry." Zhang Dawei said.
Since 2021, more than 80 cities have successively issued documents to lift purchase restrictions. According to Zhang Dawei's observation, the policies are slightly different in different places, with third- and fourth-tier cities generally "one-size-fits-all" directly canceling purchase restrictions, while second- and first-tier cities are "taking small steps", issuing policies many times and finally canceling purchase restrictions.
"(Hangzhou) has more than 400,000 newly settled people a year, and they can buy houses when they settle down, even if they don't issue documents this time, in fact, there are no restrictions on purchases." Zhang Dawei told Southern Weekend.
The remaining Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Tianjin are also constantly releasing easing signals.
In 2023, Guangzhou will cancel the purchase restrictions in Panyu, Huangpu, Huadu and Jianggao Town, Taihe Town, Renhe Town, and Zhongluotan Town in Baiyun District, and reduce the social security threshold in the purchase restriction area from five years to two years. In January 2024, the purchase restrictions will be lifted for houses with a construction area of more than 120 square meters in Guangzhou, and those already under their names will not be counted in the number of restricted units.
In addition to the fact that large units are not included in the scope of purchase restrictions, the policy also allows "rent-one-buy-one, hang-one-buy-one", and Guangzhou has become the first city among the first-tier cities to divide the scope of purchase restrictions according to area segments, allowing people who are not registered in the city to buy housing.
Tianjin's most recent policy adjustment was on May 6, confirming that the purchase restrictions on newly built commercial housing of more than 120 square meters in the six districts of the city were lifted by residents with household registration. In September last year, Tianjin's housing purchase restriction area was reduced to six districts in the city.
On the same day as Tianjin, Shenzhen announced the relaxation of purchase restrictions in seven regions (Yantian District, Bao'an District, Longgang District, Longhua District, Pingshan District, Guangming District, and Dapeng New District), which adjusted the standard of ordinary housing, shortened the social security period for non-deep households, and allowed enterprises and institutions to purchase commercial housing.
Beijing also eased restrictions on purchases outside the Fifth Ring Road in April, ushering in the first adjustment in 14 years, allowing two Beijing families to buy a new home outside the Fifth Ring Road.
Zhang Dawei analyzed that the core of Hangzhou's cancellation of the purchase restriction policy lies in the relaxation of the credit policy, not just the relaxation of the purchase restriction.
For example, as long as there is no house in the purchased housing city, the first set can be identified, and theoretically, there can be 13 first sets of places in Hangzhou's ten districts and three counties and cities. At the same time, if there is only one house in all housing urban areas and is being put up for sale, the first set can be identified, and if there is a house in three counties and cities in ten districts of Hangzhou and all of them have been listed for sale, then an individual can own 26 houses in Hangzhou and enjoy the first set of interest rates.
The purchase restriction was lifted, and the house price did not rise
"The core of judging whether to restrict purchases is to see whether there are local social security payment requirements. The abolition of the social security payment requirement is the real lifting of the purchase restriction. Yan Yuejin, research director of the E-House Research Institute, explained to a reporter from Southern Weekend.
Linked to social security, it has been a red line for purchase restrictions from the very beginning.
On April 17, 2010, the State Council issued the Notice on Resolutely Curbing the Excessive Rise of Housing Prices in Some Cities, which stated that "local people's governments may, according to the actual situation, take temporary measures to limit the number of housing units purchased within a certain period of time". Since then, the curtain of purchase restrictions has been opened.
In the same month, Beijing issued the country's first housing "purchase restriction order". The scope of the restrictions includes the suspension of housing loans for non-Beijing residents who cannot provide proof of tax payment or social insurance payment for more than one year. The same home-buying family can only buy a new commercial house in Beijing.
The main reason for the introduction of the purchase restriction order is to curb the rapid rise in housing prices.
Chen Zhi, vice president of the Beijing Real Estate Association, told Southern Weekend that the global financial crisis erupted in 2008 and China began a period of monetary easing, and housing prices went from picking up to skyrocketing. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2009, the transaction volume, sales volume and housing price growth of domestic commercial housing set a historical record.
In the 1980s, Chen Zhi worked in the Beijing Municipal Urban Construction and Development Office, where he participated in the drafting of relevant policy documents. That year's four trillion yuan made the property market recover significantly, and the first-tier cities represented by Beijing repeatedly auctioned "land kings". Soon after, Chen Zhi's focus shifted from restoring the market to regulating housing prices.
The impact of Beijing's "purchase restriction order" was immediate, and only a month after the landing, the transaction volume of new homes was halved, and the residential transaction volume in 2010 fell by nearly 40% year-on-year, and the land auction also cooled down significantly.
Starting from Beijing, the purchase restriction order spread across the country. Since then, the purchase limit, loan limit, price limit, sale limit, and business restriction have been collectively referred to as the "five restrictions", which have become the landmark policies of real estate regulation.
There have also been ups and downs in the purchase restriction order. In 2014, there was a wave of relaxation of purchase restrictions across the country.
In June of that year, Hohhot City fired the first shot to cancel the property market purchase restrictions, and since then, Shijiazhuang, Harbin, Guiyang and other nine second-tier cities have gradually announced the cancellation of purchase restrictions. This trend lasted for a year, starting in Hohhot and ending in Changchun.
After a decade, the current round of cancellation of purchase restrictions has risen to first- and second-tier cities, and it may become the end of the history of this round of purchase restrictions.
The 2014 round of purchase restrictions, with the introduction of the later monetization and resettlement policy for shantytown reconstruction, failed to curb the further rise of housing prices across the country. This time should be different.
Yan Yuejin judged that the current full relaxation of purchase restrictions, even if it can increase the transaction volume of the property market, there is a high probability that it will not increase housing prices. Because if people want to buy a house, they generally have to sell their houses first, and there will be a large number of second-hand houses for sale, so the overall housing prices will not "rise", and the volume and price will not be synchronized.
"If it was before, such a policy would have been immediate, and housing prices would have risen quickly, but this time, the effect seems to be less than expected." Yan Yuejin said.
Since 2023, a total of 19 second-tier cities have fully lifted purchase restrictions. Based on the changes in housing prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities published on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics every month, Southern Weekend sorted out the impact of the relaxation of purchase restrictions on these cities.
It can be seen that in the next month and the next month when the purchase restrictions were lifted, the local second-hand housing prices fell month-on-month, with almost no exceptions, and the most recent month fell even more compared with the same period last year.
For new houses, they are all down, only Hefei, Kunming, and Taiyuan have been sporadically flat or rising. The decline has also widened in the latest month compared to the same period last year.
It is worth noting that in Changsha, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Xi'an, where purchase restrictions have been lifted since April 2024, new home prices have all risen in the latest month compared to the same period last year, which may explain why their policies were introduced a little later.
There are more sellers than buyers
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of March, the area of commercial housing for sale nationwide was 748.33 million square meters, of which the area of residential buildings for sale increased by 23.9%. In the absence of a significant increase in the supply of new homes, this means that there is currently a surge in second-hand listings, with far more sellers than buyers.
On April 30, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting and put forward for the first time a plan to study and digest the stock of real estate and optimize the incremental policy. Destocking the property market may become the focus of the next stage.
However, the ability of various regions to absorb stocks is not optimistic. According to the statistics of the E-House Research Institute, as of March, the inventory destocking cycle of newly built commercial housing in 100 cities across the country was 25.3 months. Among the 100-city sample, 41 cities have a de-migration period of more than 36 months, most of which are third- and fourth-tier cities.
In Zhang Dawei's view, if the national purchase restriction is liberalized, the only cities that really have an impact are Beijing and Shanghai, because the household registration policy of the two places is strict and it is difficult to settle down, while most other cities, like Hangzhou, have formulated a relatively relaxed settlement policy, which circumvents the purchase restriction system in disguise, so even if the policy is liberalized, the impact on the market is not great.
"In the short term, the expectation of rising residents' income is weak, the expectation of falling housing prices is still there, and the real estate industry is not facing a simple financial problem, and there is pressure on land, sales, customer sources, loans and even homogeneous product competition." He noted.
In addition, the complete cancellation of purchase restrictions is likely to lead to a sharp increase in the number of second-hand housing listings, and the houses are "sold more and more", making it more and more difficult to destock.
Taking Hangzhou as an example, I love my home data shows that the transaction volume of second-hand houses in April exceeded 8,000 units, but there were only about 5,000 new houses, which is the first time in Hangzhou in the past ten years that the transaction volume of first-hand and second-hand houses has been inverted.
A veteran of the real estate industry who has lived in Hangzhou for a long time told the Southern Weekend reporter that the second-hand transaction volume in Hangzhou was high in the first quarter, especially the second-hand "old and small" transactions near the city center. Another reason is that some buyers believe that second-hand houses are relatively guaranteed by quality, and "many people have doubts about the quality of houses after the delivery of the property."
Many interviewees believe that although there are still 6 places to maintain purchase restrictions, it is the general trend to completely cancel this policy.
"The pace of liberalization in Beijing and Shanghai may be relatively slow, not to the end at one time, such as opening up second-hand housing transactions first, or reducing social security payment requirements." Yan Yuejin predicted.
He believes that now there has been a fundamental reversal in the supply and demand structure of the property market, and the cancellation of purchase restrictions is equivalent to the return of the property market to the market.
Southern Weekly reporter Xu Tingfang and Southern Weekly intern Chen Yang
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yue