China unlikely to end real estate controls

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

According to a recent report by the China Index Research Institute, housing sales dropped in 30 out of 35 monitored Chinese cites last week and fell more than 50 percent in seven cities. What have been the effects of China's real estate controls? Does the central bank’s reserve requirement cut mean that the real estate controls will be relaxed next year? The reporter interviewed certain experts over these questions.

Significant success achieved in property market regulation

The data about new home sales in October recently released by the National Statistics Bureau also confirmed the fact that housing prices started falling on a large scale.

Amid the overall decline in housing prices, 40 cities subject to home purchase restrictions posted a decline of 0.215 percent, much higher than the 0.047 percent decline in other cities. Therefore, industry insiders believe that housing prices have not reached a turning point despite a sustained fall.

Yi Xianrong, a researcher with the Institute of Finance and Banking under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that there is no inflection point, and the declining housing prices show that the central government's real estate control measures are paying off.

Real estate macro-control will not loosen in 2012

Recently, senior governmental officials successively expressed their attitudes about macro-control of the real estate market, indicating that the central government's determination to continue macro-control policies is firm and strong, and the policies will not loosen in 2012 or the following years.