(Yicai) March 11 -- Housing rents have as much as halved in some major Chinese cities due to more and more subsidized rentals coming onto the market and boosting supply.

Xi'an recently announced that costs for government-subsidized rental housing for migrant workers can be cut by up to 50 percent. Two affordable rental projects in Zhuhai also issued such notices last month, with actual rates set at 30 percent below the market.

Subsidized rental housing aims to provide below-market accommodation to low- and middle-income individuals, new urban residents, and young people. It mainly consists of public rentals, government-subsidized rentals, and price-limited commercial houses.

"More government-subsidized rentals have come onto the market in recent years," an insider from the real estate rental sector told Yicai. "Coupled with local governments continuously buying existing commercial and second-hand homes for conversion, affordable housing is becoming a cornerstone in stabilizing supply in the rental market."

In January, the average rents for centralized apartments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, and Wuhan fell 0.8 percent from December and 2.5 percent from a year earlier, according to a report by China Real Estate Information Corporation.

The number of centralized rentals in the eight cities topped 1.48 million, with the first-tier city of Shanghai having 433,800 units, the report said. Second-tier Hangzhou and Chengdu had over 210,000 and 100,000 units, respectively.

Since some local governments started buying unsold homes to convert into affordable housing to reduce local inventories, the supply of government-subsidized rentals has surged.

China built 8.7 million government-subsidized rental houses between 2021 and last year, according to data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

The construction of new affordable housing projects continues, with 24 centralized apartment projects including more than 12,000 units breaking ground across 22 major cities last month, according to CRIC data. Government-subsidized rentals will likely account for around 85 percent of the total.

About 199,000 new affordable rentals are expected to be added nationwide this year, keeping the downward pressure on housing rents, CRIC said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev