A Second Round of Easing in One Month
Beijing has issued a further round of purchase restriction relaxations — its second in a single month — in a move that explicitly targets the upcoming golden season (September–October) and aims to catalyse both rigid and improvement-driven demand in the capital's sluggish new home market.
Five Key Changes
The August 2026 policy notice (《关于进一步优化调整本市房地产政策的通知》) contains five substantive adjustments:
- Social insurance cut: Non-Beijing households buying within the Fifth Ring Road now need only one year of social insurance or individual income tax, down from two years. The city-wide standard has been unified at one year.
- Purchase caps removed: Outside the Fifth Ring Road, there is no cap on the number of purchases. Within the Fifth Ring, one unit is allowed; multi-child families may purchase one additional unit.
- Parental gifting liberalised: Parents who gift commercial property to adult children are no longer subject to purchase qualification reviews — removing a significant barrier for intra-family property transfers.
- Housing fund uplift: Dual public housing fund contributors' first-home loan ceiling rises to 2.4 million yuan (second home: 2.0 million yuan), with a maximum uplift of up to 3.4 million yuan in eligible cases.
- Renovation extraction added: A new renovation withdrawal option has been introduced, capped at 250,000 yuan per account, on top of existing loan drawdown rights.
Why Now?
Beijing's property market had been the weakest of the four first-tier cities. July data showed first-tier new home prices broadly flat or declining, and cumulative January–July developer investment fell 19.2% YoY to 4.3009 trillion yuan. With five consecutive months of secondary market price rises at risk of stalling without fresh demand, the city acted. Officials are targeting the September–October window — historically the two highest-volume months of the year — to anchor a sustained recovery before year-end.
Policy Backdrop
The Beijing easing fits into a nationwide pattern: the PBOC is maintaining an appropriately loose monetary stance, and the State Council's housing ministry has directed cities to "focus on stabilising transactions and improving supply-demand balance". Analysts note that while the policy toolkit is potent in aggregate, execution at the district level and consumer confidence remain constraints on how fast the recovery can materialise.
Early Indicators
Property agents in Haidian and Chaoyang districts report that new home visit volumes rose modestly in the first two weeks of August, ahead of the policy announcement. The secondary market in Beijing recorded five consecutive months of month-on-month price rises through July — the longest unbroken streak since 2021 — and agents expect this run to extend into Q3 if transaction volumes pick up.