Housing authorities in Guangzhou have issued new rules, effective Wednesday, to keep the pre-sale prices of new homes within regulatory guidance limits, in a fresh effort to cool the local property market.
According to a circular posted by the Guangzhou Municipal Land Resources and Housing Administrative Bureau on its official website Monday, property developers seeking a pre-sale permit to sell homes are required to register their pre-sale prices online, with the prices subject to the bureau's price guidance.
Those who fail to register online or whose pre-sale prices exceed the guidance levels will not be granted a permit, and developers could be suspended from sales registration if they are found to be selling homes at higher prices.
The bureau could not be reached by the Global Times by press time.
Guangzhou is the second city after Beijing to make a statement about such regulatory guidance for housing prices.
On April 10, Yang Bin, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, also said the government would intervene and guide prices when granting pre-sale permits for new housing projects.
"But price guidance is unlikely to really impact the market, because housing prices are not set by the government," Yin Bocheng, director of the real estate research center at Fudan University, told the Global Times Tuesday.
According to Guangzhou's local online registration system for home sales, new home prices in the city jumped by 34.9 percent year-on-year in March, far in excess of the central government's goals, China Business News reported Tuesday.
In addition, Hangzhou is rumored to become one of the new pilot cities for the property tax starting from May, but the local tax authorities claimed to have not received any notification regarding the issue when contacted by the Global Times Tuesday.
Copyright ©1999-2011 Chinanews.com. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
