Beijing Residents Await Saturday’s Shared-Housing Lottery Draw

(Beijing) — The good news: The wait is nearly over for more than 12,000 families in Beijing, who will find out tomorrow if they’ve been chosen in a lottery system allowing them to purchase a new type of subsidized home.

The bad news: Only 427 will be selected.

Those odds are about 1 in 284, a dispiriting figure in a city grappling with policies to reduce exorbitant property prices and provide affordable housing — particularly for working-class families buying their first home — in a city of 22 million people.

The 427 units are a new type of so-called shared-ownership home (SOH), in which ownership will be split at a certain ratio between homebuyers and the government, according to a statement Thursday from the city’s Chaoyang district housing regulator.

In Chaoyang, for instance, the ratio starts at a 50-50 split between the government housing agency and the buyer. But homebuyers can choose to increase their share up to 90%, and can resell their portion at market price five years after receiving their property deeds.

At a rate of 22,000 yuan ($3,300) per square meter (10.8 square feet), an eligible homebuyer would pay nearly 2 million yuan for half of a 90-square-meter apartment — the largest unit size listed in the initial SOH project material for Chaoyang.

Home prices in Beijing are among the highest in the country, with costs in many areas exceeding 100,000 yuan per square meter — nearly 13 times the 2016 average monthly salary of workers in the capital.

Beijing will give priority to residents with a local Beijing household registration permit when it allocates SOH projects over next five years, the city said in recent an urban development plan. About 70% of total SOH projects will be geared toward locals.

Contact reporter Pan Che (chepan@caixin.com)