① In the past month, Beijing loosened its property market policy four times, and credit measures for divorce home purchases were further optimized. ② The three departments jointly issued a notice clarifying that mortgage applicants who sign an online contract to buy a home after April 23 and have been divorced for less than a year will implement the credit policy for their first home if they do not have a complete housing unit in Beijing under their family name.
Financial Services Association, April 23 (Reporter Li Jie) In the past month, Beijing once again introduced a policy to relax the property market.
Recently, according to market news, the Beijing branch of the People's Bank of China, the Beijing Supervisory Authority of the General Administration of Financial Supervision, and the Beijing Housing and Construction Commission jointly issued a notice clarifying the implementation criteria for housing units. Mortgage applicants who signed an online contract to buy a home after April 23 and have been divorced for less than a year will implement the first home credit policy.
The reporter learned from several commercial banks that the above news is true, and banks have already received relevant notices.
Furthermore, the reporter learned from the Beijing Housing Provident Fund Center that the policy currently only involves commercial loan adjustments. The Provident Fund has not received any relevant notice yet, and the original policy is still being implemented.
According to reports, the original restrictive policy was introduced in 2017. In March 2017, the four departments jointly issued the “Notice on Strengthening Risk Management in Housing Credit Business in Beijing”, which clearly states that mortgage applicants who buy a home with a loan within one year of divorce, commercial loan and provident fund loan policies are implemented with reference to the two sets of credit policies.
“This adjustment to the criteria for determining the number of housing units after divorce is a further optimization and refinement of the divorce housing purchase policy after abolishing that no party can buy a house within 3 years after the divorce was abolished on March 27 this year.” Chen Wenjing, director of market research at the China Index Research Institute, said.
On March 27, Beijing's “You cannot buy a house in Beijing within 3 years of divorce” policy document was abolished. According to relevant department personnel, when conducting housing eligibility reviews, Beijing no longer reviews divorce documents, length of divorce, and number of family housing units before divorce; buyers do not need to go to the window to verify divorce information.
“At the end of March, the divorce purchase restriction policy was loosened, but the loan limit policy of buying a house after divorce is still being implemented. The current Beijing New Mortgage Policy is equivalent to abolishing the loan restriction policy.” Li Yujia, chief researcher at the Housing Policy Research Center of the Guangdong Urban Planning Institute, said.
According to Chen Wenjing, after the implementation of the policy, the couple in Beijing did not have a home in their name after their divorce, that is, based on the first eligibility and first loan, that is, when buying a house in the sixth district of the city or the sixth non-city district, the interest rate was reduced from 4.55%/4.5% to 4.05%/3.95%, and the down payment ratio was reduced from 50%/40% to 30%. The threshold for buying a home and the cost of buying a home are significantly lower than before. This measure has a certain driving effect on releasing reasonable demand for home purchases restricted by this policy.
“Looking at it now, investment demand in Beijing has basically disappeared, so there are more opportunities to relax some relatively strict purchase restriction policies in the past.” Guo Yi, chief analyst at Heshuo Agency, said.
Judging from the transaction situation in the Beijing market, in March, more than 14,000 second-hand commercial residential units were sold in Beijing. Since April (4.1-4.21), 8,247 second-hand commercial housing units have been sold, and the market has maintained a certain level of activity.
Meanwhile, in the new housing market, according to Guo Yi, the year-on-year decline in new housing transactions in Beijing has been significant as of April.
“In the past month, Beijing has already made two adjustments to the provident fund policy and relaxed the housing purchase policy twice in response to divorce. It is expected that the next policy regulation will also be based on this pace to provide more precise relaxation for specific groups of people, and then drive an improvement in overall expectations through the release of local customer needs.” Guo Yi said.
Chen Wenjing believes that this policy adjustment means that policies introduced during the period when the market is overheated are expected to be withdrawn one after another, sending a positive signal to the market to further optimize policies, which is expected to have a favorable impact on the recovery in market sentiment. Currently, Beijing's overall real estate policy is still quite strict, and there are expectations that restrictive policies will continue to be optimized in the future.