(Yicai Global) Nov. 16 -- Beijing authorities have set a tenancy cap for government-subsidized rental housing built on collective construction land.

While the city encourages long-term rental agreements, a single tenancy should be no more than 10 years, per a regulation released by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Land and Resources Management and the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban Rural Development.

Collective rental housing is property collectively owned by farmers, the document said. Such property can be leased for profit, but not sold, it said.

The regulation aims to prevent rental houses from being illegally occupied by tenants amid government efforts to curb soaring property prices.

In April, the Beijing government promised to offer 1,300 hectares of land to build 500,000 rental housing units in the next five years.

The government will rent these houses, most of which will be built on collectively-owned land, in bulk to low-income families at affordable prices.

The land for rental housing should be planned and managed in accordance with the standard of residential land for urban residence, and the necessary public services should be provided, the two departments said. The rental houses should be near industrial parks, transportation hubs and new districts, and should be fully decorated and furnished upon delivery.

Factors such as surrounding property prices, the local rental housing market, location, facilities and market demand can be considered when rent is set at collective rental units, they said.

Land in China is either state-owned or collectively owned. The collectively owned land has to be turned into state-owned for commercial housing to be built on it.

To this end, the document states that the real estate ownership certificate of the collective rental housing will be issued as a whole, instead of splitting into unit ownership certificates.

The main body of collective rental housing should, in principle, be the collective economic organizations at the town level, and all relevant formalities in project approval, plans and land use should be handled in a unified manner. The shareholding of the collective economic organizations in newly established cooperative development enterprises shall not be lower than 51 percent, and there should be a guaranteed minimum dividend.