CHINA is considering a new round of efforts to regulate the sizzling property market after the moves it imposed about a year ago to limit purchases of residential apartments effectively brought down prices, analysts said yesterday.

Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin revealed that the ministry will complete a project to link databases of personal housing information concerning 40 major cities by the end of June, a measure designed to further curb house speculation, the analysts said.

The government's latest move will enable it to catch people who amass houses across different cities and lay the foundation to levy property tax nationwide, said Zhang Dong, head of the property research institute at Central South University.

Zhang Dawei, an executive with property agent Centaline, said the government is expected to heavily tax people who own multiple houses in different cities.

China's property market took off after the government implemented housing market reforms in 1998.

But prices have grown out of control in recent years, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when the central government implemented a massive stimulus package and ordered banks to flood the market with credit.
 

Source:shanghaidaily.com