Third Round of Easing in Twelve Months
Beijing rolled out its third package of property-market easing measures in a single year on the evening of August 7, 2026, when the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources and the Beijing Housing Provident Fund Management Center jointly issued a Notice on Further Optimizing and Adjusting the City's Real Estate Policies (document number Jingjianfa [2026] No. 400). The notice took effect on August 8, 2026, following earlier adjustments in August 2025 and December 2025.
The document contains seven measures grouped into three areas: purchase restrictions, property gifting rules, and housing provident fund support. It arrived roughly a week after the Politburo meeting in late July set the tone for second-half economic work, making Beijing the first first-tier city to move.
Purchase Restrictions: Two Years Cut to One
The headline change lowers the social-insurance or individual income tax payment requirement for non-Beijing-hukou households buying commercial housing inside the Fifth Ring Road from two consecutive years to one. The city-wide requirement is now a uniform one year, matching Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Purchase quotas are unchanged. Non-hukou families that meet the one-year threshold may buy one unit inside the Fifth Ring Road, with multi-child families permitted one additional unit. Outside the Fifth Ring Road, there is no cap on the number of units.
Gifting Rules Relaxed
Under a 2011 rule (Jingjianfa [2011] No. 140), parents transferring a Beijing home to an adult child by gift had to have the child's purchase eligibility verified. The new notice removes that verification requirement, allowing families to file directly for transfer registration with the relevant documents.
Provident Fund Ceiling Rises to 3.4 Million Yuan
The most financially significant change is a restructuring of provident fund loan limits, which are now tied to the number of contributing spouses.
| Borrower profile | First home | Second home |
|---|---|---|
| One contributor in household | 1.2 million yuan | 1.0 million yuan |
| Both spouses contributing | 2.4 million yuan | 2.0 million yuan |
Three add-ons can lift those ceilings further:
- Up to 200,000 yuan extra for households with hukou in the six urban districts buying a first home outside those districts;
- Up to 400,000 yuan extra for homes qualifying under the city's green building development support policy;
- 400,000 yuan extra for Beijing-hukou families with two or more children.
Add-ons are cumulative, capped at 600,000 yuan for single-contributor households and 1.0 million yuan where both spouses contribute. That takes the theoretical maximum provident fund loan to 3.4 million yuan. Actual amounts still depend on assessed repayment capacity.
The notice also optimizes the mechanism linking loan size to contribution history, revises how loan counts are determined, supports mortgage-attached title transfers for existing homes financed with provident fund loans, and permits withdrawals for home renovation.
Market Reaction
Yan Yuejin, deputy head of the E-house China Research and Development Institution's Shanghai branch, said shortening the inside-Fifth-Ring threshold from two years to one directly expands the pool of eligible non-hukou buyers. Analysts broadly described the timing as well judged, arguing the combination of a wider buyer base and cheaper policy-rate funding through the provident fund should support transaction volumes and help repair expectations in a market where national land-sales revenue fell 31.5% in the first half of 2026.
Beijing's move also lands against a softer national backdrop: top-100 developer sales fell 13.3% year on year in July 2026, according to Purui Digital Intelligence data cited by Zhongtai Securities.