In March this year, our city’s property market meets a “green shoot”. According to the statistics by the Municipal Housing Authority that 264,000 square meters of new commercial houses in the city are sold (2393 sets), with a month-on-month increase of 82% and a year-on-year increase of 76% among which 245,000 square meters of commodity houses are sold (2206 sets), with a MOM increase of 75% and a YOY increase of 76.2%. By the end of March, the city’s inventory commercial housing has reached 2,220,000 square meters with a reduction of 280,000 square meters compared to that in the end of 2015.
A related official of the Municipal Housing Authority tells the reporter that as a key to solve the inventory housing, as early as last year, we have started to take measures according to our own facts, make classified regulations and explore a set of experience of destockng which has made great achievement and relieved the inventory pressure. By the end of 2015, the city’s urban commercial housing available area has reached about 4.18 million square meters among which the commodity housing available area has reached about 2.48 million square meters. The destocking circle is about 12 months.
(1)Strengthening governmental market regulation: Guide consumption and stabilize market expectations
Since 2014, the city government has issued a series of systematic measures, such as the “The notice on further promoting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market”, “The notice on raising commercial housing for shantytowns placement” and so on. Efforts have also been made to implement the new policy on the real estate, to guide housing consumption and stabilizing the market expectations by optimizing housing and the structure of land supply, increasing fund and financial support, implementing preferential tax policies and improving the operation of the market mechanism etc. At the same time, a new way to digest the inventory commercial housing has been discovered by opening up “three housing channel” and establishing a real and online platform for the shantytowns placement to buy commercial housing. Since the implementation of this measure in May in 2015, the urban commercial housing sales year-on-year growth rate has reached over 10%, the year-on-year growth rate of second-hand housing sales has reached 40%.
(2)Encouraging and guiding the migrant population to buy houses in our city.
With mega-city construction as an opportunity to fully pace the step of promoting the building of a human-oriented new urbanization, we started to relax the reguirments for the migrant population to settle in the city since 2014. Yichang has gradually become the residence of migrant workers and non-local population which has promoted the market’s rigid demand. According to the identity information of the purchasers, among the purchasers, 20% of them are urban buyers and 80% are non-urban buyers.
We should fully play the “Modulator” function of land supply in the real estate market. The municipal government should reasonably control the rhythm of land supply and the incremental from the source to relieve the inventory pressure in accordance with the market situation.
(3)Leading enterprise structure adjustment: Highlight the characteristics and enhance the market competitiveness
Now the real estate market is in a state of contradiction, in which comes a trend of slowing down growth, differentiation of industry and enterprises, and lay many investment opportunities in structural adjustment.
Therefore, the municipal government has actively guided enterprises to structurally adjust from a single residential product to a combined one with industry, tourism, endowment and characteristic business, and establish a real estate industry and market with Yichang characteristics.
New opportunity of the development for the real estate market in our city will be brought by the settlement and development of projects featured with the combinational construction of residence and industry, such as the Juanqiaohepan Tourism Resort Projects of the Western Circle of Hubei Province Investment Company, the Three Gorges Cultural Street Projects of Junyao Group, the Central Business District Projects of the third Construction Bureau of China, Tsinghua Science Park Incubator Industrial Projects and others.
According to the changes in the market and consumer demands, the enterprises have provided real estate products which are in accordance with the demands of the market and the masses which has enhanced the market competitiveness and promoted the housing consumption: the sales turnover of projects such as Dijing by Evergrande Real Estate Group, the Star of Yichang by China Construction Group etc have reached 1billion yuan in the first month in the opening quotation and the houses of Osmanthus Garden are sold out in the first week which also breaks the sales record in Yichang.
(4)Increasing monetized resettlement of shantytowns reconstruction: strengthen the purchasing power of housing consumption
The municipal government intensified the shantytowns reconstruction with a monetized resettlement as the breakthrough point in 2015. During the levy work of houses, the compensation will be 20% higher to those who choose money as a resettlement. It is an incentive measure to encourage the levied people to use their compensated money to buy commodity houses in the real estate market. The proportion of people who choose money compensation is generally more than 80%. As the purchasing power increases, it also stimulates the housing consumption.
In addition to increasing monetized placement proportion, we also reduce the volume of new resettlement houses to build a promotion platform for commodity houses. We establish a dual (both network and entity) trading platform of commodity housing source for the shantytown resettlement and provide lower price than the market price of commercial housing for the levied residents to purchase. 2000 levied residents have purchased houses through this platform,
What’s more, the government ordered commercial houses from the market as a source of shantytown resettlement and affordable houses to digest the inventory houses. Government is actively operating and ordering together or organizing group purchasing of commodity houses to be used as shantytown resettlement houses at a price 10% lower than that of the market among which the government has ordered more than 300 sets of houses at one time in a project in Dianjun District. This is great help for the real estate developers who are in a dilemma.
(5)Strengthening competent authorities services to Optimize the development environment of the real estate market
In order to do a good job in the real estate market monitoring, early warning and forecasting and increase the disclosure of real estate market information, the Municipal Housing Bureau has established a system of quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily report which will objectively and truly release the real estate market information.
A responsible officer of the Municipal Housing Authority market supervision department analyses that the whole policy environment of the city\'s real estate market will be looser in year and we will further accelerate the the pace of destocking.（Reporter Chen Lu and Correspondent Tan Yong）