(Yicai) Oct. 16 -- Chengdu, the capital city of China's southwestern Sichuan province, has released four policies aimed at ending the downward trend of the real estate market and promoting stability.

The policies released yesterday include lowering builders' costs to obtain land use rights, allowing individuals to receive permanent household registration after purchasing a house, eliminating differences in the requirements for first- and second-home buying for mortgages, permitting the withdrawal of inter-generation provident funds, and increasing mortgage quotas.

Chengdu's property market significantly improved since the end of last month when the Chinese central government released a stimulus package to support economic growth and real estate industry recovery.

Nearly 190,000 square meters of new apartments were sold in Chengdu during the seven-day National Day Holiday ended Oct. 7, up 72 percent from a year earlier, according to data from China Real Estate Information Corporation. Some 2,442 pre-owned apartments were sold in the period for an average of 349 a day, up 46 percent from the figure in the previous two months.

In the first week after the holiday, online signings of home sale contracts averaged 572 a day, up 97 percent and 161 percent, respectively, from the weeks after the other two week-long statutory holidays this year -- Chinese New Year Labor Day holidays.

The main points of Chengdu's new round of policies were lowering house purchase prices and reducing land investment costs, which are aimed at sustainedly boosting transaction confidence, Yan Yuejing, deputy director of the E-House Real Estate Research Institute, told Yicai.

Chengdu will let households with two children enjoy first-time house purchase standards and no sales restrictions to lower house purchase costs, thus increasing the willingness to buy houses, Yan noted. The policies about developers’ land use right acquisition aim to provide more opportunities for the construction of premium apartments, he added.

According to the new policies, builders must transfer half of the total land use right fee for new commercial-purpose land plots in Chengdu within one month of the acquisition. The other half can be paid within one year, together with the interests for the local government.

The measure allowing individuals to immediately receive permanent household registration after buying a home in Chengdu does not have restrictions on time and district, which means that it will notably boost the transaction prosperity of the real estate market, Yan pointed out.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Futura Costaglione