Cooling policies to slow home sales
Developer Vincent Lo says latest mainland measures will deter property buyers
The mainland's property curbs in the past decade have been unsuccessful, but the new round of measures will slow property sales, said Vincent Lo Hong-sui, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
"Certainly they haven't been," said Lo, the chairman of Shui On Land, a Shanghai-based developer, in Beijing on Wednesday. "Had they been successful, home prices wouldn't have risen higher the more the government curbed."
The central government on March 1 imposed its toughest curbs in a year, ordering the central bank to raise down-payment requirements and interest rates for second mortgages in cities with excessive price gains, enforcing a property sales tax, and telling local governments with the biggest price pressures to tighten home-purchase limits.
It ordered individuals selling properties to pay a 20 per cent tax on the sale profit when the original purchase price is available, a levy that is being easily avoided.
The new measures would slow property sales immediately because the 20 per cent tax was not that easy to bear, Lo said.
The new administration should build more social housing to boost supply, because that was the best way to curb the market, he said, and should leave luxury home prices to the market.
