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BEIJING, June 25 (TMTPost)——The purchase restrictions on home-buying for better living conditions in Yangzhou City in southeastern China's Jiangsu province will be lifted on July 1, according to a notice issued by Yangzhou's housing-management authorities on Sunday.

According to the notice, the policies aim to bolster the sagging housing market and meet the living improvement needs of families to reduce their financial burden of home purchase. People with housing improvement needs can directly sell the original house without the original three-year restriction on the sale of new homes with the newly signed commercial improved housing purchase contract.

The municipal government of Tianjin has also issued a similar notice to adjust the provident fund loan amounts of the first home. The adjustment intends to raise the maximum limit of the first housing provident fund loan in Tianjin to 1 million yuan, and the maximum limit of the housing provident fund for buying a second home loan to 500,000 yuan. Workers can withdraw the housing provident fund for both the down payment and the loan principal and interest repaid by using the housing provident fund loan to purchase a house.

The latest loan market offer rate (LPR) was also released on Tuesday, with the one-year LPR lowered to 3.55%, and the five-year LPR lowered to 4.2%.

The adjustment of the one-year LPR as well as the five-year LPR were both lowered by 10 basis points. This is the first adjustment of the five-year LPR this year, while the last downward adjustment was in August 2022.

If calculated with a commercial loan amount of 1 million yuan, a 30-year loan, and equal principal and interest repayment, this LPR decrease of 10 basis points will reduce the monthly payment by 58.54 yuan and the cumulative 30-year monthly payment by 21,000 yuan. At present, the lower limit of the national unified commercial personal housing loan interest rate for the first home is 4.1%. Since this 5-year LPR is down 10BP, the unified mortgage rate lower limit is expected to be lower than 4%.

Experts believe that real estate demand is still very sensitive to mortgage interest rates, and the interest rate cuts are likely to stimulate demand. "This interest rate cut may only be the beginning of the policy mix to stimulate the recovery of real estate demand by way of cost reduction. In this context, the real estate differentiated credit policy is ready to play a big role in promoting the real estate market in cities with low energy and little influence. Cities with great influence are likely to continue the credit easing," said Liu Qinghai, an analyst at Tianfeng Securities.

He also said that first-tier cities may lower interest rates of the second home purchase in the future. The down payment will differ in regions with internal purchase restrictions and non-purchase restrictions in the same city. The second suite down payment will be ratioed down, and specific regional purchase restrictions will be loosened.

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