FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Shenzhen moves to create 'healthy, affordable' homes

Shenzhen moves to create 'healthy, affordable' homes

Shenzhen is expected to launch more innovative models for managing the real-estate market after being entrusted by the central government to be a “demonstration city for socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

The guideline, issued on Aug 18 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, said Shenzhen needs to set up a comprehensive and long-term mechanism for a stable and healthy development of its real-estate market.

 

The document, in particular, urged the city to speed up improving its affordable housing policies for low-income citizens and talents.

 

Skyrocketing property prices are inevitable with the city’s prosperity, but if not handled properly, it could result in problems like companies being forced to move out due to high office, factory and living costs.

 

Some of the solutions have been very effective, including the introduction of a scientific category system of talents and a rents model before home purchases. More new measures with affirmative results are also expected, such as creating affordable industrial spaces.

 

Yan Yuejin, director of the E-house China Research and Development Institution, said industrialization and urbanization have led to sky-high property prices in Shenzhen, as in the case of other major international cities.

 

Industrialization has pushed up home prices in metropolises like London and New York, while urbanization has boosted Tokyo’s.

 

As for solutions to the problem, Shenzhen has tried and plans to roll out further measures besides introducing home-purchase curbs like many other cities on the Chinese mainland.

 

Yan said some of the solutions have been very effective, including the introduction of a scientific category system of talents and a rents model before home purchases. More new measures with affirmative results are also expected, such as creating affordable industrial spaces, he said.

 

The latest measure is a system of “commercial apartments with stable rents” planned to be launched in October this year -- the first of its kind in the country.

 

Apartments under the system are required to be rented out for a fixed period at average market rates, but limited to a fluctuation range of 5 percent annually.

 

Shenzhen is also the first mainland city to set up an independent system of affordable housing for talents, as early as in 2016, with different levels of talents and detailed incentive policies accordingly.

 

Shenzhen Talents Housing Group Co was founded three years ago to focus on investment, construction and management of homes for talents. So far, it has set up about 88,700 homes, started construction of 28 projects, and has been operating a leasing area of more than 720,000 square meters.

 

In a document released by Shenzhen’s housing authorities in April, the city plans to build 170 new residential homes with 60 percent being affordable units for rent and purchase by 2035.

 

Shenzhen will be more like Singapore, where the majority of the population live in public housing projects and their asset value will weaken, said Sun Bushu, deputy director of the South China City Research Association. In Singapore, only about 40 percent of all residential homes are public properties.

 

As a "demonstration city", Sun said Shenzhen will learn from others’ experiences and, more importantly, usher its own path of unprecedented management models with high demonstrative value.

 

With these measures, he believes Shenzhen’s housing prices would be stable along the way to becoming a “demonstration city”.

 

In the first half of this year, the total trading volume of new homes in Shenzhen surged 38 percent, but average prices had dropped slightly by some 2 percent, compared with the same period last year, according to the China Real Estate Index System.

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