China increases funds for housing projects eligible for funding
China: Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong said on Thursday (Oct. 17) that China would raise bank funding for housing initiatives to 4 trillion yuan (US$562 billion) and broaden its “white list” of projects eligible for finance.
According to Ni, during a news briefing, monetization strategies for urbanization projects would also be used, with aspirations to cover a million communities.
The commitments to provide more funding for financially stressed developers and urban projects are a part of a slew of policies unveiled in the last few weeks with the goal of stabilizing an industry that went into crisis in 2021 and hindering the expansion of the second-biggest economy in the world.
Ni told reporters, “It can be said that the property market’s bottoming out has begun.”
China unveiled plans in January for a “white list” of projects eligible for funding, which would guarantee developers could finish building and provide customers’ houses. Banks have authorized 5,392 of these projects as of the end of the third quarter, with funding totaling close to 1.4 trillion yuan.
At the press briefing, State Financial Regulatory Administration deputy director Xiao Yuanqi said that as of October 16, approved loans for the projects on the “white list” had increased to 2.23 trillion yuan.
Officials from the finance ministry unveiled more steps on Saturday to support the real estate market, including enabling local governments to purchase unsold houses and vacant land using money from special bonds.
The central bank announced actions in late September, one of which was lowering the required minimum down payment percentage to 15% for all purchases.
In the same news conference, Tao Ling, a deputy governor of the central bank, said that interest rates on current mortgages are projected to decrease by an average of half a percentage point, helping 50 million families and 150 million inhabitants.
She claimed that the rate reductions saved families 150 billion yuan.
Since last year, China has been enacting small-step initiatives to bolster the confidence of house buyers who are worried about steadily falling home prices, developers’ timely delivery of homes, and the stability of their own employment and wages in an unstable economy.
The governing Communist Party’s highest decision-making body, the Politburo, headed by President Xi Jinping, demanded further market stabilization measures at a meeting in September.
