The cities of Jinan in Shandong Province, Tianjin and Chongqing, and Zhengzhou in Henan Province all shared their experiences at the conference after participating in the pilot program.
And on Thursday, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued an official notice on revitalizing old communities, drawing on the experiences of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing.
“The measure aims to deepen review and evaluation, strengthen coordination and policy support, and improve the approval process, so as to steadily advance guidance on land-use planning,” the ministry said in a statement.
A report on China’s economic outlook published on Thursday by Spanish bank BBVA said “weak market sentiment among households and businesses” continued and “the housing market remains the top risk.”
“It will not be easy to reverse a deflationary environment amid soaring real estate prices.” [market] “China’s property market will remain the biggest risk to the economy in 2024,” Dong Jinyue, chief economist at BBVA Research, said in the report.
China’s real estate sector has become a major pillar of the economy in recent decades, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of the country’s GDP, according to a report released in May by French insurer AXA.
“However, property developers have recently been slowing completing homes. In 2022, property developers have defaulted on more than 50 billion yuan ($6.89 billion) of bonds,” said Wang Yingrui, macro research economist at AXA. “Given the property sector’s significant impact on the economy, this has put a strain on broader activity.”
Other measures include raising the floor on mortgage interest rates for home buyers, setting up a 300 billion yuan re-lending pool and allowing local governments and state-owned enterprises to buy unsold land and homes from struggling developers.