中国出台大规模稳楼市政策

10月17日，中国住房城乡建设部、金融监管总局等五部门联合召开“促进房地产市场平稳健康发展有关情况”发布会，宣布将出台一系列政策以推动中国陷入低迷良久的房地产市场止跌回稳。然而，会上所公布的政策未能达到市场预期，会后中国房地产股票出现显著回调。

此次颁布的政策组合可概括为“四个取消”、“四个降低”、“两个增加”。具体来说，“四个取消”旨在充分赋予市政府自主权，取消各类购房限制性措施，包括取消限购、取消限售、取消限价、取消普通住宅和非普通住宅标准。“四个降低”就是降低住房公积金贷款利率；降低住房贷款首付比例、降低存量贷款利率、降低换购住房的税费负担。“两个增加”指的是通过货币化安置等方式，新增100万套城中村和危旧房改造；年底前将白名单信贷规模增加到4万亿。

中国上一次出台大规模房地产刺激政策是在2016年。当时的措施稳住了经济，但也使得房地产领域聚集了大量泡沫。于是，中国政府于2020年出台了对房地产行业的限制性政策，并使这一对于中国经济增长起到重要推动作用的行业备受冲击。今年开始，随着中国经济持续低迷，中国政府开始释放政策以复苏房地产行业。在17日的发布会上，住建部部长倪虹称中国房地产市场已经开始“筑底”。

但在17日的政策组合颁布之后，中国大陆的CSI300房地产指数于10月18日暴跌近7.9%。这一现象主要是因为政策不及市场预期，且未能解决房地产市场存在的根本性问题，如房地产商资金链断裂致使楼盘烂尾等。此次政策组合能否取得理想效果，还需要更多时间检验。

On 17 October, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, National Financial Regulatory Administration, and five other ministries held a joint press conference on ‘promoting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market’, announcing a series of policies to help support and stabilise this long-depressed pillar of the Chinese economy. However, the measures announced at the meeting failed to meet market expectations, and Chinese property stocks took a significant hit shortly thereafter, with the CSI 300 Real Estate Index falling by 7.9 per cent on the following day.

The policy portfolio can be summarised as 'four cancellations, four reductions, and two increases'. Specifically, the 'four cancellations' aim to fully empower municipal governments to lift all restrictive measures on housing transactions, including the cancellation of purchase restrictions, sales restrictions, price limits, and distinctions between ordinary and non-ordinary residential standards. The 'four reductions' are geared at easing the financial burden on homebuyers by lowering the housing provident fund loan interest rate, dropping the down payment ratio for housing loans, cutting the interest rate on outstanding loans, and reducing the tax burden on buying and selling residential property. The 'two increases' refer to renovating 1 million units of urban village accommodation and dilapidated housing through monetised resettlement and other means, as well as a 4 trillion yuan increase in available credit for ‘whitelist’ projects by the end of the year.

China's last major stimulus for the property market was in 2016. At the time, this helped stabilise the economy, but also created a massive bubble in the property market – prompting the Chinese government to introduce more restrictive policies for the real estate sector in 2020, allowing less tolerance for risky practices. Still, given the enormous role that real estate and adjacent industries have played in China's economic growth for decades, the sector is almost too big to fail. At the beginning of this year, the government began to release policies to revive the real estate sector, as China’s economic recovery continued to stagnate. On 17 October, during his press conference, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong said that China's property market had finally ‘started bottoming out’, following three years of government-mandated ‘adjustment’.

None of this has so far translated into a positive market reaction, however. The main reason the policy has fallen short of market expectations is that it still fails to address the fundamental problems underlying the real estate sector, namely the breakdown of capital chains that developers have suffered in recent years, leading to numerous project terminations across the country. It remains to be seen whether this policy package can achieve its expected results and make any real progress toward revitalising the beleaguered sector.