(Yicai Global) Feb. 2 -- China’s large cities which have real and high housing demand are likely to be the first to experience an uptick in property sales, as municipalities around the country roll out a slew of supportive policies to spur a sluggish market, according to a senior researcher at the China Index Academy.

“The first- and second-tier cities are expected to recover first, and the rest of the country might stabilize by the second quarter at the earliest,” said Chen Wenjing, director of market research in the academy's business department.

In an effort to get people to buy, almost 20 cities have lowered the minimum mortgage rates for first-time home purchasers to under 4 percent, according to Yicai Global research. These include key second-tier cities such as Tianjin, Zhengzhou in central Henan province and Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province.

And on top of the lower rates, a number of cities are offering additional support. Kunming in Yunnan province is encouraging developers to market their projects to potential buyers outside the southwestern province. The municipal government is also making efforts to improve the healthcare and educational infrastructure near the new housing projects in order to help attract potential buyers with deep pockets from other cities.

The county government in Jiyuan, Henan province is even offering to subsidize buyers of large apartments, which usually cost more than smaller ones. The policy is effective until the end of April.

Thanks to these incentives, some people who were waiting on the sidelines have started to arrange viewings of properties, a sales agent at a Tianjin-based real estate firm told Yicai Global yesterday.

But the full recovery of the property market will take some time. Weak consumer confidence caused by developers’ debt defaults, the delayed handover of projects under construction, as well as the drop in people’s income and their resulting lack of spending power are the main reasons by people who wish to buy are keeping a wait-and-see attitude, said Wang Yeqiang, director of the special committee for real estate at the China Society of Urban Economy.

At the end of last year, the interest rate on personal housing loans for first-time home buyers was lowered to 3.9 percent in Wuhan, and the Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, the cradle of China’s optoelectronics industry also no longer only allows local residents to buy, another property agent based in the capital of central Hubei province said. But despite these measures, the market is still lackluster.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor