Beijing now requires all real estate properties in the city to get registered under a unified system, in a bid to strengthen regulation and control speculation.
The move won’t affect people whose properties are already registered and have clear-cut ownership, but will demand those having group ownership or government-subsidized ownership to identify their assets and pay due compensations.
Announced by the Beijing Municipal Planning and Land Resources Administration, the city is fully implementing property registration rules from today. Beijing property owners need to register their real estate ownerships rather than properties, receiving "certificate of property rights" and "real estate registration certificate".
The previously used property certificate will be halted issuing, although still valid to demonstrate ownership, which officials said was in accordance with the “no change” principle to minimize inconvenience for citizens.
However some residents still need to modify how they live based on the new rules. Staff apartments issued by a host of state-owned enterprises, for example, should register to make clear of the ownership of the properties, as the staff only have the right to use rather than own them.
Similar problems exist in some houses where live more than 10 families or residents, and some properties passed several times from the government to enterprises and then the residents, whose ownerships got obscured in that process. These residents should figure out the ownership and then pay some compensation.
Prices of properties with unclear ownership are higher than those registered nowadays due to less taxes levied on such properties, Chinese official news agent China News Service reported on its website Chinanews.
But on the other aspect that should be “a short-time atmosphere”, as the new rule would improve the development quality of China’s real estate market after dampening speculation. In addition, if taxes are levied on properties, “Chinese citizens can expect lower property prices given less demand for such properties,” Chinanews said.
The practice in Beijing marked the overall implementation of the property registration rule across all the four municipalities in China. Before the action was extended to the whole city, Fengxian District has initiated the comprehensive registration on June 12 with the issuance of more than 7,000 property rights and real estate registration certificates.
