(Yicai) May 7 -- Shenzhen in China’s southern Guangdong province has further eased its restrictions on home-buying to boost the real estate market demand.

Households with two children in Shenzhen are now allowed to buy up to three houses in non-core urban areas, according to a document released by the Housing and Construction Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality yesterday.

Shenzhen issued house purchase restrictions in 2010 and tightened them further until 2020. However, it began to gradually ease them in 2021 after the property market entered a downward trend.

The city also lowered the social insurance and individual income tax requirements needed for people to be recognized as permanent residents, thus allowing them to buy homes in non-core urban areas, the document also showed.

Moreover, Shenzhen introduced new requirements allowing companies meeting certain standards to buy houses in non-core urban areas for their employees.

The document also dictates that property developers and real estate agencies can receive second-hand homes from buyers of newly built houses as part of the payment to facilitate transactions of used apartments.

Shenzhen, just like Beijing and Shanghai, is slightly changing its housing policy to sell more newly built and stock homes and meet the demand of new residents and youngsters for urban-rural integration, said Li Yujia, researcher at the Guangdong Housing Policy Research Center.

The new policy of Shenzhen does not lift all house purchase limits, indicating that it is prudent about restricting property speculation, Li added. However, the city will likely introduce more new policies if the market does not recover, he noted.  

Editor: Futura Costaglione