Supervision of new home sales strengthened

Shanghai's housing authority strengthened its supervision of new home sales on Sunday as the watchdog announced the latest batch of 47 residential projects slated to be rolled out.

According to a statement posted on www.fangdi.com.cn, the official website of the local housing administration bureau, a total of 1.567 million square meters of new homes across 12 districts, or 13,969 units, have received the official go-ahead. They will be available for sale very soon, about one and a half months after the release of the previous batch of 33 projects totaling 1.06 million square meters, or 10,006 units spanning 11 districts.

To better promote openness and fairness during the home purchase process, the bureau has announced a series of new policies in its latest effort to step up supervision.

From now on, any residential project that has been given the green light for sale will need to make details including when and where interested buyers should go to submit their materials and pay the deposit public on the www.fangdi.com.cn at least three days before they start priority purchase. This has also been required to be extended to seven days from the previous five days.

Meanwhile, irregularities, such as real estate developers picking "desired clients" mainly through setting extra criteria for payment, will be closely monitored. Violations may incur punishment by the watchdog. 

"It is good news for ordinary home-seekers like me as we don't have to worry any more about missing the deadline of submitting materials and paying deposits to get  qualified," said Vanessa Wang.

Wang is a Shanghai native in her early 30s who has been spending every weekend going from one sales office to another all around the city over the past month to seek an apartment of her own.

There are media reports that in several extreme cases, developers purposefully 'hid'  from ordinary home seekers to ensure all their homes could be sold to 'desired clients.'

New home sales in Shanghai, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, jumped 62.9 percent month over the month to 1.1 million square meters in March, reflecting robust market demand, according to data released earlier by Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co.