Policies mulled to stabilize home rents

Writer: Zhang Yu  | Editor: Stephanie Yang  | From:  | Updated: 2019-01-02

Shenzhen is mulling new polices to regulate the rental housing market and is striving to build or acquire no fewer than 300,000 rental housing units by 2022, which would account for more than 50 percent of the total supply of new housing, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported Dec. 27.

Currently, urban village housing and industrial dormitories constitute 80.5 percent of the rental housing market in Shenzhen, according to a report recently submitted to the Standing Committee of the Shenzhen Municipal Peoples’ Congress.

The approximately 4.9 million rental housing units in urban villages account for 62.6 percent of rental housing in the city, and around 1.4 million units of industrial dormitories account for 17.9 percent, the report said.

Due to the large number of migrant workers flowing into the city, about 65 percent of the permanent residents in Shenzhen live in rental apartments. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 7.83 million rental housing units in the city, which cover 348 million square meters and account for 73.5 percent of the total housing supply.

The high proportion of market-oriented housing is a significant feature of Shenzhen’s rental housing market. However, most of the rental housing units are rented out by individual home owners or sublessors, who are widely criticized for arbitrarily terminating lease contracts and relentlessly raising rents.

In recent years, Shenzhen has been making efforts to develop a housing rental market featuring diverse suppliers, standardized services and stable tenancies to ease pressure on tenants amid surging property prices.

The government also encourages State-owned enterprises, real estate developers, housing brokers and property service providers to engage in the standardized rental housing industry.

In addition to increasing the supply of new rental housing units, the city is also stepping up efforts to improve the functions of the government-backed home rental service platform, where information on available housing can be shared and rental deals can be regulated.

The rent of residential housing in the city hit an average of 79.5 yuan (US$11.53) per square meter between January and October, up 7.9 percent year on year, while the average rent in urban village housing stood at 39.4 yuan per square meter, up 6.8 percent from the same period last year, according to statistics.