(Yicai Global) Dec. 20 -- The proportion of Chinese residents expecting housing price rises has gone up, a survey found, although the central government has introduced a series of regulatory measures to control the housing market and achieved some effects. This indicates the government's earlier call for tightening control on the housing market to prevent housing prices from rebounding. 

The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, yesterday released the result of its survey conducted among depositors in cities and towns across China. The survey found that 32 percent of residents expect housing prices to rise in the first quarter of 2018, and this proportion is higher than that in the Q3 survey by 0.2 percentage points.

The proportion of residents who expect housing prices to stay flat is 48 percent, up by 1.9 percentage points from last quarter. Those who expect housing prices to drop account for 9.3 percent, down by 1 percentage point from last quarter, and those who said "it's hard to tell" account for 10.7 percent, down by 1.1 percentage points from last quarter.

With regard to incomes, people's income perception index is 53.6 percent this quarter, up by 0.8 percentage points from the previous one. The income confidence index is 54.9 percent, up by 1.6 percentage points compared with the previous quarter, indicating that residents have increased expectations of and confidence in incomes.

Employment indexes are also better than last quarter. The employment perception index this quarter is 44.9 percent, up by 2.3 percentage points from last quarter, while the employment expectation index is 53.4 percent, up by 2.6 percentage points, the survey found.

In addition, more residents surveyed believe prices will rise. The price expectation index is 64.3 percent, up 3.1 percentage points from the previous quarter, while that in Q3 drops by 0.1 percentage points from the previous quarter.

The residents' consumption and savings willingness declined, but their investment willingness increased. Residents who tended to "consume more" accounted for 26.2 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from the previous quarter; residents who tended to "save more" accounted for 40.8 percent, down 0.8 percentage points from the last quarter; and those tended to "make more investments" accounted for 33.0 percent, an increase of 1 percentage point on the previous quarter, the survey showed.

The questionnaire on urban depositors is a quarterly survey system established by the People's Bank of China in 1999. Each quarter, 50 depositors from each of 400 bank outlets in 50 large, medium and small cities, totaling 20,000 depositors countrywide will be randomly selected as respondents. The investigation covers four aspects, namely, depositors' general judgment on the economic operation, situation of savings and debts, consumption condition and basic situation of depositors.