(Yicai) May 9 -- Hangzhou, home to Alibaba, NetEase and other tech giants, entirely scrapped restrictions on house purchases today to revive the Chinese city’s real estate market, with more mainland cities expected to follow suit as soon as this month.

The capital of Zhejiang province is the first city to completely lift qualification checks on buyers after the Politburo on April 30 called on local governments to “study policies to digest the housing stockpile.”

A wave of policy easing is likely to be unleashed after Hangzhou ended checks on buyers’ permanent residence status, social insurance payments, and property holdings that were first introduced in 2016, according to analysts.

Major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xi’an could be next. A number of places, including Chengdu, Suzhou, and Changsha, have already eased their housing policies this year.

The example set by Hangzhou carries significant implications for policy adjustments and will encourage other cities that still have curbs, said Yan Yuejin, research director of the E-House China Research and Development Institute.

Hangzhou has 530,000 square meters of housing stock between April 1 and 27, down 46 percent on the previous month, while the transacted area was 450,000 sqm, a 55 percent slump, according to data from real estate consultancy CRIC.

The city’s pre-owned property sales fell 2 percent to a bit more than 8,400 units last month from March, data from Beike Research Institute showed. The average price per sqm was CNY29,069 (USD4,023), down 0.5 percent on the prior month and 12 percent on a year ago.

Editor: Emmi Laine