(Yicai) March 30 -- Ningbo’s second-hand property market has picked up this month, partly because of the second-tier city’s supportive policies and the spillover effect from first-tier cities.

Pre-owned house sales in Ningbo surpassed 5,400 units this month as of March 26, with the average daily transaction volume on working days exceeding 300 since mid-March, according to the latest data from the local housing and urban-rural development bureau. In the first 23 days of March, transactions soared 132 percent from the whole month of February.

After five years of deep adjustments, Ningbo’s pre-owned property market has shown signs of recovery this year. In January, 5,205 second-hand houses were sold in the city, up 36 percent from a year earlier to the second highest in six months. Transactions declined in February due to the Chinese New Year holiday, and quickly rebounded in March.

5,000 has long been seen as a critical threshold of monthly transaction volume for Ningbo’s second-hand property market, a local real estate agent told Yicai. This month, there is a high probability that the transaction volume will exceed 6,000 units, reflecting a significant warm-up trend, they added.

At the end of February, Ningbo launched the third phase of its Old for New program, which involves the city-wide purchase of second-hand houses built before 2010 at a price based on the average value independently assessed by three third-party institutions. This aims to help citizens obtain funds to upgrade their housing conditions more quickly and accelerate transactions.

A highlight of Old for New is that participants obtain a ‘replacement voucher’ of 5 percent of the assessed value of their property that can be used when purchasing a new home, in addition to having their houses valued at assessment prices, a local industry insider told Yicai.

The website of the third phase of Old for New had accumulated over 170,000 visits as of March 23, receiving 7,801 applications for old property exchanges, according to official data. The program has driven the purchase of 1,687 improved houses.

In the second half of last year, Ningbo launched the first two phases of Old for New, resulting in the repurchase of 1,000 older residential properties. The government plans to renovate them and either convert them into public rentals to support low-income groups or use them as transitional housing for locals who have lost their homes due to urban demolition or young and skilled talents coming to work in the city.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione