More than 20 Chinese cities have adopted a new national policy issued in August that further relaxed the criteria for first-time home buyers, with local authorities announcing stimulus moves such as scrapping purchase restrictions to further spur sales.
The latest moves came on Monday from Qingdao and Jinan in East China's Shandong Province, where local housing authorities lifted purchase restrictions and optimized trading for commercial housing.
Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province became the first among first-tier cities to lower the limit of interest rates for first-time home buyers by 10 basis points, the Economic Information Daily reported. The new policy is retroactive to Friday.
The current five-year loan prime rate - a market-based benchmark rate - as announced in August is 4.2%, while the lowest mortgage rate for first-time apartment buyers in Guangzhou is 4.1%. The new policy means that home buyers could save about 60,000 yuan on a 300,000-yuan, 30-year mortgage, according to the Economic Information Daily.
From September 1 to 10, more than 30 provinces and cities had announced more than 30 policies and measures to optimize the property sector, data from the China Index Academy showed.
