Beijing - China’s central bank said it will allow banks to cut the minimum required mortgage down payment to 20% from 25% for first home purchases as it steps up support for the property market.
The eased requirements will be for buyers in areas without the purchase restrictions that are applied in some of the biggest metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Shanghai, the People’s Bank of China said Tuesday in a statement on its website.
The minimum down payment for second-home purchases was set at 30%, the central bank said.
A rising stockpile of unsold new homes is hampering government efforts to spur an investment expanding at the slowest pace in more than five years.
China’s politburo, the top decision-making body of the Communist Party, in early December vowed to reduce home inventory as one of its key tasks in 2016, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.