The well-known Chinese news site Sina recently published a series of reports on the newly released Provisional Regulations on Real Estate Registration. The State Council Legislative Affairs Office is currently seeking public comments on the Provisional Regulations, which created a massive social discussion across China. Experts expressed the belief that the new Regulations will have four significant consequences. First, they will set the stage for a new property tax. Second, they will empower anti-corruption operations. Third, they will trigger a significant housing price drop as government officials engage in panic-selling. Fourth, they will result in an insistence on better government financial transparency. Most of the nationwide discussions have focused on the possibility of immediate panic-selling in the second-hand real-estate market. However the new Regulations in their current form only allow the government and real-estate owners (and “stakeholders”) to search the Registration database and the search results cannot be revealed to the public.
Source: Sina, August 15, 2014
http://finance.sina.com.cn/focus/bdcdj/