(Yicai) July 22 -- China has issued its first administrative regulations on housing rental, about five years after beginning public opinion solicitations.

The development of the housing rental market should adhere to a mix of market-led and government-guided approaches, the supply of rental houses should be increased, and market-oriented and professional housing rental enterprises should be cultivated, according to the regulations issued by the State Council yesterday.

The regulations also include requiring housing rental companies engaged in subletting operations to establish housing rental fund supervision accounts and make them public, as well as demanding local governments to create housing rental price monitoring mechanisms to regularly publish information on rental price levels for different areas and house types.

Moreover, the regulations require housing rental firms to refrain from publishing false or misleading property information in listings and prohibit them from illegally collecting, using, processing, transmitting, disclosing, or trading clients' personal information.

The introduction of housing rental regulations will improve market transparency, facilitate the government's understanding of market dynamics, and provide a reference for the parties signing rental agreements, said Cao Jingjing, general manager of the index research department at the China Index Academy.

Rental price control was mainly at the policy level before, but now, it has been incorporated into national regulations, providing institutional guarantees for curbing rent inflation, guiding market expectations, and preventing systemic risks, said Zhao Ran, director of the Industry Council for China Rental Apartment's Housing Rental Industry Research Institute.

Editor: Futura Costaglione