By: Yawen Chen
BEIJING: The capital city of eastern China’s Jiangsu province joined top-tier cities like Shanghai on Monday in banning companies from buying residential properties, closing a market loophole that has fuelled demand and defied government curbs.
The presence of corporate property buyers has surged recently, with the number of companies bidding for one individual real estate project in certain areas reaching nearly a hundred, the Nanjing municipal government wrote on its official account on China’s popular social media platform Wechat.
The new measure will take effect by 1900 local time on Monday.
The Nanjing government stressed that the phenomenon was manageable and their percentage among all buyers had remained low, below 0.5 percent, in 2018.
Nanjing’s new home prices fell by 0.2 percent in June from a month earlier, official data from the Statistics Bureau showed.
China’s property market has been heating up lately, despite intensifying official curbs. The market’s surprising resilience underscores rampant fraud in the sector that has allowed buyers to skirt existing restrictions.
China said in late June that it would renew efforts to crack down on property irregularities in 30 major cities this year, prompting several local governments to announce new rules in recent months to limit companies from purchases. (Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Source: Reuters