(Yicai) Sept. 10 -- Beijing’s property market has experienced a strong rebound since the beginning of August, when the Chinese capital city issued a policy document to further ease home-purchasing restrictions.

About 14,000 pre-owned houses were sold in Beijing last month, up 3.9 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the China Index Academy. Transactions reached 3,104 homes in the second week of August and then rose to 3,387 in the third week and 3,490 in the fourth week. The transaction area was 67,500 square meters, 75,300 sqm, and 133,400 sqm in the three weeks.

The momentum continued into September, with second-hand property sales surging 26 percent to 3,300 units in the first week of the month from a year ago, according to CIA data. New home sales area climbed 31 percent to about 92,000 sqm in the period.

On Aug. 7, Beijing issued a policy document allowing residents without local household registration to buy a home within the Fifth Ring Road -- the expressway encircling the city center and some suburbs -- after paying social security or individual income tax in the city for just one year, down from two. The policy also increased the maximum amount that eligible first-time homebuyers can borrow from the housing provident fund to CNY3.4 million (USD506,860) from CNY1.6 million.

In the first eight months of the year, Beijing’s second-hand home sales rose 5.9 percent to around 121,000 units from a year earlier, reaching the highest level in five years, CIA data also showed.

“Quality housing listings in some popular neighborhoods and communities with high cost-performance ratios after price adjustments in the past two years are dwindling after a sustained absorption,” a real estate agent in Beijing’s Dongcheng district said.

The area of new properties listed for sale in Beijing decreased 31 percent in the first eight months of the year from the same period last year, with the overall residential property inventory down 20 percent to 7.55 million sqm as of Aug. 31 from a year earlier, according to data from the CIA.

The effects of the new policy are expected to strengthen in the coming months, as second-hand home transactions usually take one to three months from subscription to contract registration, and they are only counted in the sales data after the whole process is completed, Guo Yi, chief analyst at Heshuo Institution, told Yicai.

However, despite the market rebound, second-hand home prices continued to decline. Beijing’s pre-owned house prices fell 4.6 percent in the eight months ended Aug. 31, according to the China Real Estate Index System’s China 100-City Housing Price Index. Prices of new residential properties inched up 0.8 percent in the period.

After the new policy took effect in August, second-hand home transactions in Beijing remained active and the market’s supply-demand relation improved, but prices are still in the adjustment phase as new house inventory remains at a relatively high level, said Cao Jingjing, general manager of the CIA’s index research department.

Whether the market can achieve sustained improvement still depends on the transaction performance and the transmission of demand to the new home market in the coming months, Cao noted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione