The new policy is the first concrete response from Beijing to growing fears that an unsustainable bubble has formed in the real estate market. Concerns over property bubbles have been voiced by a wide range of commentators in China in recent weeks, including prominent real estate developers.
Residential prices in China's 70 largest cities rose 5.7 per cent in November from a year earlier, accelerating from October's 3.9 per cent year-on-year rise.
Overall prices rose 1.2 per cent month-on-month from October to November.
The new tax policy requires anyone selling a secondhand apartment or house within five years of its purchase to pay a sales tax of 5.5 per cent, extending the taxable period from the previous two years.
The new policy, intended to discourage “flipping” of apartments by speculators, essentially returns the market to the situation a year ago, before the government introduced a series of preferential policies to stimulate the flagging property market.
“On its own, this is just a piecemeal reversal of the government's stimulus policies but it sends a powerful signal to the market that the government wants to encourage home purchases for dwelling but is trying to contain speculative demand,” according to Ha Jiming, chief economist for CICC, the Chinese investment bank.
But the government is clearly wary of clamping down too hard on the property market, which has been a driver of Chinese economic growth for much of this decade and the force behind such fast-growing industries as cement, steel, automobiles and home furnishings.
“We estimate that if policies are too harsh, as to sharply reduce real estate transactions to the levels we saw at the end of last year, then China's GDP growth could drop to as low as 6 per cent, and that is clearly something the government does not want to see,” Mr Ha added.
Other stimulus-related policies, including smaller down-payment requirements and lower loan rates for first-time buyers, will remain in force for now, analysts said.
