BOC makes its foray into rental housing market

Bank of China Ltd today inked house renting deals with eight major national developers and eight local state-owned enterprises in Shanghai, aiming to build a comprehensive financial services ecosystem for the market.

The moves marks the state-owned bank is moving full steam ahead to explore the huge and promising market for house rentals. And it follows the step of the China Construction Bank, which joined hands with major real estate developers last November to tap the market.

The Beijing-based lender signed contracts with eight large developers, including China Vanke Co Ltd, China Overseas Estate and China Resources Land Ltd, to offer them funding of more than 200 billion yuan (US$ 31.7 billion).

As the country’s fourth-largest commercial lender by assets and the most globalized Chinese bank, Bank of China aims to connect the capital channels and integrate house rental operation services at home and abroad by leveraging its international resources.

The bank said it will be committed to increase the supply of rental housing by boosting collaborations on various financial products covering public rental market, self-sustaining commercial rental market and collective rental market.

The lender plans to make its foray into the “talent apartment” and aims to provide an all-round service for professionals. As such, its Shanghai branch signed a letter of intent with the local financial service office and teams up with eight local state-owned enterprises like Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co and Shanghai Zhangjiang Group Co and will provide 170 billion yuan for those companies.

“We have heeded President Xi Jinping’s call that ‘housing is for living and not for speculation’, and are balancing our business accordingly”, said Ren Deqi, vice president of the bank.

Yuan Tao, Party secretary and chairman of Shanghai Zhangjiang Group Co, applauded the cooperation “a big enabler” to its ambitious plan for building talent apartments with a total area of 8.9 million square meters.