The "15th Five Year Plan" proposes to improve the system and mechanism for promoting consumption, and to clean up unreasonable restrictive measures on consumption such as automobiles and housing; The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2025 proposed to "clean up unreasonable restrictions in the consumption sector and unleash the potential of service consumption", focusing on stimulating potential consumption. Recently, housing consumption policies have been further optimized in various regions. What impact have these measures had? Where is the policy space to help unleash the potential of housing consumption? The reporter recently visited multiple real estate markets. A series of policies have been loosened for a period of time, and many first tier cities have implemented policies tailored to the city, further relaxing purchase restrictions and injecting vitality into housing consumption. Beijing has increased its support for multi child families, allowing eligible registered residence and non registered residence multi child families to purchase 3 and 2 sets within the Fifth Ring Road respectively; Shanghai has introduced the "Shanghai Six Measures", which no longer limit the number of newly built or second-hand housing units purchased by resident families who meet the local housing purchase conditions outside the outer ring road; Shenzhen has optimized and adjusted its personal housing credit policy, no longer distinguishing between first-time and second home buyers in terms of interest rate pricing mechanism arrangements. Mr. He, a resident of Beijing, has two children and owns a house in Shijingshan District and Haidian District respectively. After the update of Beijing's purchase restriction policy, families with multiple children from Beijing can purchase three sets of housing within the Fifth Ring Road, and Mr. He's original housing loan interest rate has also been lowered to 3.05%. After New Year's Day, Mr. He successfully purchased a small three bedroom apartment of over 70 square meters in Xicheng District. As the property has been held for two years, there is no need to pay value-added tax. Lower mortgage interest rates and down payment ratios have lowered the threshold for many urban consumers to purchase homes. By the end of December 2025, Beijing will no longer distinguish between the interest rates for first and second home commercial loans, and will lower the minimum down payment ratio for second home provident fund loans to 25%; Starting from January 13, 2026, the loan limit for families with multiple children in Yinchuan, Ningxia will increase by 200000 to 300000 yuan; Nationwide, starting from January 1, 2026, the interest rates for existing personal housing provident fund loans will be uniformly reduced by 0.25 percentage points... In addition to optimizing the purchase and sale restrictions policy, many regions have taken various measures tailored to local conditions to shorten the transaction cycle and improve transaction efficiency, effectively activating the liquidity of second-hand housing. On December 23, 2025, the first project in Shenzhen to pilot housing ticket resettlement in urban villages was launched. The first batch of 55 relocated residents were properly resettled through flexible combinations such as housing ticket resettlement and monetary compensation. Within just one week, two households who chose to receive housing tickets for resettlement purchased new houses near the demolition site and successfully redeemed their housing tickets. Chengdu has issued a policy to lift transfer restrictions on second-hand housing that has obtained real estate ownership certificates before October 14, 2024 (inclusive) and is still in the restricted period, starting from January 1, 2026; Promote cross bank transfer of existing houses with collateral in Jiangmen, Ordos and other places, allowing real estate in a mortgaged state to be directly transferred and registered, supporting enterprises and individuals to complete transactions without settling their original loans; Zhaoqing has established a tripartite cooperation mechanism of "exchanging old for new", which clarifies that if the old house is not successfully sold, the buyer can fully refund the deposit... In addition, the Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development recently announced the second extension of the preferential policy of refunding personal income tax for exchanging houses. After the implementation of new policies in various regions, trading sentiment has been boosted and the activity level of the real estate market has been increasing. After the relaxation of purchase restrictions, the real estate market in some first tier cities has rebounded. The Beilian C1 project in Fengxian District, Shanghai is one of the beneficiary projects of the "Shanghai Six Measures" new policy. The project salesperson introduced that they receive an average of 300 customer visits per day. Chen Jie, director of the Housing and Urban Rural Development Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, believes that in first tier cities, appropriately lifting purchase restrictions is a direct way to stimulate residents' housing consumption demand. In his opinion, the lifting of purchase restrictions in some first tier cities has lowered the settlement threshold for migrant populations, and both migrant and new urban residents can enjoy equal public services, which can further promote population and talent mobility. Liu Lele, a resident of Zhongqu District, Jinan City, Shandong Province, has always wanted to buy an improved housing unit. Recently, taking advantage of the adjustment of Jinan's housing provident fund policy and the decrease in the down payment ratio for second-hand houses, she chose a 115 square meter three bedroom apartment. The full payment for the house was 1.855 million yuan, and we took out a housing provident fund loan. The minimum down payment was reduced from 30% to 20%, which relieved us of nearly 200000 yuan in cash payment pressure, "said Liu Lele. The financial dividends, including personal housing loans and housing provident fund, are more intuitively reflected on the consumer side. According to monitoring data from the Zhongzhi Research Institute, there will be over 260 housing provident fund policies introduced across the country by 2025, mainly focused on increasing loan amounts, simplifying loan processes in different regions, and expanding the scope of withdrawals. Li Yujia, Chief Researcher of the Housing Policy Research Center of Guangdong Urban and Rural Planning Institute, believes that optimizing policies related to credit and housing provident fund will effectively alleviate the financial pressure on homebuyers. The continuous strengthening of the housing provident fund policy has fully played the role of housing provident fund in stabilizing the market, promoting consumption, and benefiting people's livelihoods, better meeting the housing needs of different levels, and having a positive impact on stabilizing and guiding market expectations and promoting the recovery and improvement of the real estate market. ”The relevant person in charge of the Housing Provident Fund Supervision Department of the Housing and Urban Rural Development Department of Shandong Province said. Industry insiders believe that clearing up unreasonable restrictive measures on housing consumption is of great significance for the recovery of the real estate market. "These measures will directly release three types of core needs: first, the rigid needs of new citizens and talents, through optimizing social security years, registered residence constraints and other policies, so that groups who have contributed to the city for a long time can obtain real estate opportunities; second, the improved needs, by reducing the down payment ratio of second set of housing, and other ways to address policy barriers to family housing upgrading and improve living quality; third, reasonable cross regional housing purchase needs, breaking administrative barriers to achieve optimal allocation of resources." Li Yujia said. According to a survey by reporters, there is still room for policy relaxation. Some policies may still impose restrictions on housing consumption and have adverse effects on market expectations, such as the scope of housing provident fund use, commercial housing transactions, and housing ownership. At present, there are still many restrictions on using housing provident fund to purchase a second home in some cities, such as the interest rate for purchasing a second home with housing provident fund being higher than the commercial loan interest rate for purchasing a second home. ”Chen Jie said that the use of housing provident fund still needs to further improve efficiency and expand its usage. Industry insiders believe that it is necessary to accelerate the exploration of using housing provident fund to pay for property management fees, house renovation, elevator installation and other housing consumption expenses. The reform of housing provident fund can also be closely integrated with urban renewal and the renovation of old houses, especially by increasing support for residents of original demolished and rebuilt old houses to independently renew. For example, allowing a large amount of provident fund deposit balance to be withdrawn for self updating renovations such as installing elevators, as well as for demolition and reconstruction of buildings, inspection and use of buildings, and transitional rental expenses. ”Chen Jie said. According to a recent survey by the China Index Research Institute, residents' confidence and willingness to purchase homes continue to improve, but the expectation of policy wait-and-see has increased, and demand has been released more slowly. According to the research on residents' policy expectations, the urgency of policies related to housing ticket placement and housing purchase subsidies is relatively high, accounting for over 30% of the total. Next are policies related to loan support, lowering mortgage interest rates, and stock recovery, accounting for between 25% and 30%. Professor Li Tiegang from the School of Economics at Shandong University said that in the context of market differentiation, implementing policies based on the city has become the norm for industry regulation. Various regions can make full use of their autonomy in real estate regulation and adjust and optimize relevant housing policies in a timely manner to address the differences in rigid and improvement oriented demand. At the same time, it can also promote the supply side structural reform of "good houses", activate the potential of housing consumption, drive the coordinated upgrading of upstream and downstream industries, and achieve stable and high-quality growth in the real estate market. (New Society)