By Chen Wenya (陈文雅)

Property, page 40

Issue 557, 20-02-2-12

Translated by Song Chunling

Original Article: [Chinese]

The housing ministry seems to have run into difficulties with its four-month-old pledge to create a database of home ownership in 40 major cities.

Jiang Weixin, the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced in an October webcast that the database would be used for tax purposes and trialed in 40 cities.

Jiang’s webcast caused a stir since he said that property purchase restrictions, such as those that outlaw the purchase of second homes, would be cancelled after the introduction of the home owner information database.

Jiang addressed the matter again last month, saying the data should be collected and digitized by the end of June, but this now looks like an impossible task; the existing records of home registrations are in paper form and are incomplete.

For its database, the housing ministry also wants to collect home owners’ personal details, income and taxation statements. This requires the cooperation of other ministries and has further delayed the process.

What’s more, many local government officials aren’t keen on the idea of an easily-searchable database of home owners – the project would bring to light more cases like that of Shandong’s former deputy governor, who was found to own 46 properties.    

As for the public, they’re wary of the data being misused and suspicious of the provinces’ pledges to only use it for internal analysis. The housing ministry has said that properties cannot be legally sold or exchanged unless they’re registered on the database.

Beijing-based industry analyst Yang Chaoxi, (杨朝淅) reckons that the housing ministry has set itself an impossible mission, saying that the municipality of Beijing needs to employ a hundred people working non-stop if it wants to meet its target.

Yang jokes that the database will be a check on corruption. “In the future, public servants with monthly income of less than 10,000 yuan won’t dare to buy so many homes.” 

Links and Sources
China Daily Curbs on home purchases to be \'phased out\'
Bloomberg China to Replace Home Purchase Limits With Info System, Taxes

This translation was edited by Will Bland.