Five provinces and three cities strictly inspect the rental market. Will partitioned housing and rental loans become a thing of the past?

Near the Second Ring Road in the southeast of Beijing, a rental house has just been transformed from "4 bedrooms and 0 living rooms" to "3 bedrooms and 1 living room". There are still traces of wall demolition in the square living room. The wooden floor has been lifted up in many places, revealing the bumpy ground. Wall coverings have peeled off in the corners. Next to the window are wardrobes and desks that are only used in bedrooms. .

“The living room used to be a partition, but now it’s not compliant. We demolished it two days ago, and it hasn’t been renovated yet.” On September 7, a staff member of a chain agency said A reporter from China Times who viewed the house as a renter said. On July 8, 2019, the new version of the "Beijing Housing Lease Contract" model text was officially implemented, requiring that the internal structure of the house should not be changed and rented separately, and illegal group renting was prohibited.

In the past two months or so, according to incomplete statistics from a reporter from China Times, at least eight provinces and cities have launched rectification and strict investigation of the housing rental market, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanxi, Henan, 5 regions in Jiangxi and 3 cities including Nanjing, Hangzhou and Hefei. In terms of content, illegal group renting, arbitrary rent increases, rent loans, and illegal intermediaries have become key targets.

Rectify chaos and stabilize rents

From the specific content, the policy priorities of the five regions are different. Among them, Jiangxi, Henan, and Shanxi focus on rectifying illegal leasing activities by intermediaries.

On July 29, Jiangxi Province issued the "Plan on Carrying out Special Rectification of Chaos in Housing Rental Intermediaries", which will seriously investigate and deal with illegal leasing intermediary activities, resolutely investigate and ban a number of "black intermediaries", Standardize the order of the real estate market. Specific policies include investigating and punishing the publication of false rental information, malicious deductions of rent and deposits, and the use of threats, intimidation and other violent means to evict tenants.

On August 14, Henan Province held a mobilization meeting for the special rectification of chaos in housing rental agencies across the province. The details of the policy can be seen from the "Special Rectification Work Plan for Chaos in Housing Rental Agencies in Zhengzhou City" released by Zhengzhou City on August 28: violent means to evict tenants, malicious deductions of rents and deposits, forced rent increases, etc. are listed as key areas of rectification , severely punish violators in accordance with the law, and resolutely ban "black intermediaries" that violate regulations.

In early September, the Shanxi Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development recently announced the first list of violations of laws and regulations by housing rental agencies to implement the "Special Rectification Work on Chaos in Housing Rental Agencies in Shanxi Province" issued in June Plan" to correct and investigate illegal and illegal issues such as publishing false housing information, illegal charges, malicious deduction of deposit rent, threats and intimidation of tenants.

For first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen, which have previously launched crackdowns on illegal intermediaries, the focus of this round of rectification is to strengthen the design of the entire rental market process. For example, Beijing released a new version of the lease contract this time, which clarified new requirements in terms of rent, deposit, and housing information: the landlord is not allowed to unilaterally increase the rent during the lease period; if the contract continues to be rented after the expiration of the contract, the original lessee will have priority under the same conditions. The per capita living area of ??a rental house shall not be less than 5 square meters, and the number of people living in each room shall not exceed 2. The same rental contract can be used for any transaction made by oneself or through an intermediary. According to the reporter's understanding, after the Beijing Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission explicitly banned partitions, many intermediaries also took the initiative to remove illegal partitions in some properties.

Shenzhen has proposed six major policy measures, including regulations on increasing supply, regulating the leasing market and leasing operations, and strengthening market consolidation. Among them, in order to achieve the development goal of "stabilizing rents and stabilizing expectations", lessors are required not to unilaterally increase rents, not to withhold deposits at will, and not to charge fees under random names.

Rental loans have become the target of severe crackdowns

In the past two years, many long-term rental apartment companies such as Hangzhou Dingjia Apartment, Shanghai Yujian Apartment, and Nanjing Lejia Apartment have experienced capital chain breaks. The controversial methods such as "high income, low income" and "rental loans" were adopted to pursue quick recovery of funds, but ultimately failed, leaving tenants in the predicament of having paid rent but without a house to live in. In this regard, the new rental market policies recently introduced by Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Hefei, the major cities in the three provinces of the Yangtze River Delta, all refer directly to "rental loans."

Nanjing launched a special rectification of the housing rental market on August 19. In view of the housing rental market, high rents are used to seize housing supply, false rental housing information is published, the rent collected is misappropriated, and there are "high income and low output" "Business model, illegal leasing or agency of houses that do not meet the rental conditions, failure to conduct institutional filing or information registration with the real estate department as required, failure to register with the market supervision department, operating without a license or operating beyond the scope, forcing or inducing the use of "rental loans" "9 types of violations, including paying rent and using violence or "soft violence" to evict tenants, will be vigorously rectified.

In early September, the Hangzhou Municipal Housing Security and Real Estate Administration WeChat public account "Hangzhou Housing Security and Housing Management" announced that Hangzhou will carry out a one-month special inspection of the housing rental market to further understand The operation of the housing rental market shall be reviewed, and the operating order of the housing rental market shall be centrally rectified and standardized. The inspection content mainly includes the basic information of the enterprise, operating conditions, housing scale and existing problems, etc., and strictly checks whether there are problems such as nested rental loan contracts, high income and low rent, false housing listings, illegal operations, and infringement of the interests of the masses.

The Hefei Municipal Housing Security and Real Estate Administration Bureau also issued a special document at the end of August to provide risk warnings to the general public. It is recommended to carefully choose housing rental companies, properly respond to rental market risks, and be wary of the "high income, low rent" to avoid future market risks to prevent damage to one's own rights and interests; to use housing rental loans rationally to prevent "being loaned" and avoid possible multiple risks such as difficulty in canceling the loan contract and difficulty in refunding the loan when renting out.

Yan Yuejin, Research Director of the Think Tank Center of E-House Research Institute, said in an interview with a reporter from China Times that there have indeed been some new controls oriented toward rent stabilization recently. Recent problems such as the rental loan bubble have caused regulatory authorities and local governments to pay special attention to the control of rental loans. In the future, market rents will definitely be strengthened.

The rental market is gradually entering a stable period

In July 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, together with eight departments, jointly issued the "Regulations on Accelerating the Development of the Housing Rental Market in Large and Medium-sized Cities with Net Population Inflow" Notice" and selected 12 cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenyang, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Foshan, and Zhaoqing as the first batch of cities to launch housing rental pilot projects.

Two years after promoting the pilot work of the rental market, many cities have made certain progress. "Strict inspection of the rental market in turn shows that the city's rental market is advancing on a large scale, or that the rental market itself is relatively developed." Yan Yuejin pointed out. At the end of July 2019, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced the "List of Cities Shortlisted for the 2019 Central Financial Support Housing Rental Market Development Pilot". 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen were shortlisted for the 2019 Central Financial Support Housing Rental Market. The rental market development pilot has a pilot demonstration period of 3 years and has received financial support ranging from RMB 60,000 to RMB 100,000.

It is not only necessary to "live in housing, not speculate", but also "rent to rent, not speculate." Overall, the national rental market has gradually entered a stable period this year after experiencing a surge last year.

The August 2019 "Monthly Analysis Report on China's Housing Market Development" released by the Housing Big Data Project Team of the Institute of Financial and Economic Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed that in July 2019, the core rent index of Weifang was 104.84 points. It increased by 0.13 month-on-month, and the growth rate decreased by 0.36 percentage points from the previous month. Compared with the same month of the previous year, housing rents in core cities fell by 0.56 in July 2019.

Data from Zhuge Housing Data Research Center pointed out that the average rent price in large and medium-sized cities across the country in August was 43.92 yuan/square meter/month, a month-on-month decrease of 0.61; the number of cities with falling rents continued to exceed the number of cities with rising rents, and the number of cities with rising rents continued to exceed that of cities with rising rents. The average increase has narrowed, while the average decrease in declining cities has expanded, the market decline has expanded, and the leasing market has become less popular.