China vows continued efforts to stabilize housing market in 2025

China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has pledged to continue efforts to stabilize the real estate market and reverse its downturn in 2025.

China will focus on unlocking housing demand by fully implementing a mix of policies to support people's needs for buying their first homes or improving their housing conditions, said a ministry official during a two-day national housing and urban-rural development work conference that ended Wednesday.

China's property market has shown positive momentum this year, bolstered by a series of pro-housing measures, including reductions in mortgage rates, lower down payment requirements, relaxed purchase restrictions, land-use improvements, and fiscal and tax policies.

The official highlighted signs of recovery in the housing market, citing year-on-year and month-on-month increases in new home transactions in terms of floor area in October and November.

The official noted that the ministry also plans to optimize the housing supply by strictly controlling the expansion of new commercial housing while improving the quality of homes to sustain this recovery.

Greater efforts will also be made to expand the supply of affordable housing, offering more support to new urban residents, young people and migrant workers to meet their housing needs.

According to the official, China intends to intensify its support for urban village and dilapidated housing renovation projects next year, further expanding the scale of such projects.

As part of efforts to establish a new development model for the real estate market, China will also focus on increasing the supply of improved housing, particularly high-quality homes.

Meanwhile, reforms are being pursued for the commercial housing sales system, shifting from the traditional pre-sale practice to the sale of completed new homes, the official said.