North China's Harbin abolishes time limit on property sales

(ECNS) -- A time limit on property sales issued in 2018 was abolished on Wednesday in Harbin, the capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang province. Harbin is the first city in China that has cancelled such a limit this year.

The city released a policy of "district limits on property sales" in 2018, stipulating that newly purchased commercial housing in the six main districts of the city could not be traded three years after the online contract was signed.

Zhang Dawei, chief analyst at Centaline Property Agency Ltd in Hong Kong, said Harbin has been lowering its housing prices for months and that the overall property market is very sluggish, so the tightening policy to curb the overheated property market does need to be loosened.

In fact, many cities in China have made moves to loosen restrictions on commercial housing purchases before Harbin. Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, released 19 policies to stabilize the property market on March 1, 2022.

According to Yan Yuejin, an expert from the E-house China R&D Institute based in Shanghai, Harbin's move can be referred to by other cities in China. In Yan's opinion, all parts of China should correct and even abolish outdated policies that may affect the stable development of the Chinese property market, creating new chances for the market's recovery through policy adjustment.

Data from Centaline Property shows that more than 60 Chinese cities have issued policies more than 70 times to stabilize the property market since 2022. Among them, more than 50 policies have been released since March and all of them are related to commercial loans, provident funding, and housing subsidies.