Taking another step to clamp down on property speculation, China yesterday unveiled a new set of nationwide policies to further tighten mortgage lending.
Banks have been ordered to stop providing mortgages to buyers of third or more homes, the State Council, the Cabinet, said in a statement on its website.
Individuals buying their first houses must plunk down at least 30 percent of the total price, instead of down payments of 20 percent, according to the statement.
More than a month ago, banks in big cities including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen had started halting third home mortgages and had increased the down payment, sources told Shanghai Daily.
But this was the first time the central government announced such measures, which come at a time when a growing number of Chinese people say the restrictive housing policies in place so far have been ineffective.
"Although the policies are already in place in some key cities, it showed the government's stance on curbing speculation," said Wu Ke, a Zhongtian Investment Consulting Co analyst.
"If these measures fail to dent prices, more forceful tools are in the pipeline."
The State Council said in yesterday's statement that it will press ahead with plans for trials of a property tax, gradually expanding the tax to the whole nation. It didn't give a timetable on when the tax may be imposed.
In April, China started to cool the rise in real-estate prices by restricting credit to buyers of a second property.
Second mortgages became subject to a down-payment ratio of 50 percent, with the interest rate at least 110 percent the central bank benchmark.
The moves crippled turnover - but didn't bring prices down.
The average housing price in Shanghai remains above 20,000 yuan (US$3,000) per square meter, compared with per-capita disposable income of around 28,000 yuan in 2009.
This week, a People's Daily survey, covering more than 46,000 respondents, showed that more than 80 percent of them said that the central government policies to rein in the housing boom were not properly implemented and that supervision was problematic.
According to the People' Daily survey, 75 percent of respondents believed that "affordable property" means a price under 8,000 yuan per square and 51 percent of them prefer a price less than 4,000 yuan.
"Housing prices are apparently too high for ordinary people," said Eric Chen, a 27-year-old engineer, who is planning to buy a flat. "We want to see more smaller-sized apartments to be built and more subsidies to be offered by the government."