June 7 - Online shopping: "7-day no-reason return" has brought consumers a lot of convenience. If this approach were applied to buying a house, would it also be feasible?

According to the official website of the Changsha Municipal People's Government, the Changsha Housing Transaction Management Center recently issued the "Notice on the Service Guidelines for Encouraging Real Estate Development Enterprises to Voluntarily Implement the 'No-Reason Deposit Refund for Home Purchases' Commitment," explicitly encouraging development enterprises to voluntarily implement the "no-reason deposit refund for home purchases" commitment. Developers are required to publicly display the no-reason deposit refund agreement at the sales site and to refund the deposit within seven working days after receiving a refund application.

Although few people make impulsive purchases for such a major matter as buying a house, special circumstances are inevitably encountered. For example, some homebuyers have said that due to problems in the credit check process, they were unable to raise funds and had no choice but to request cancellation of the purchase and a refund of the deposit, while bearing a certain proportion of penalty losses.

"The problem of 'easy to buy a house, hard to get the deposit back' is common. After homebuyers pay the deposit, situations such as failure to raise funds in place, sudden major changes, or choosing another option occur from time to time," said a relevant person in charge of the Changsha Housing Transaction Management Center. The center innovatively issued the home purchase service guidelines and encourages enterprises to voluntarily implement the no-reason deposit refund commitment precisely in order to further optimize the real estate market environment and protect the lawful rights and interests of market entities.

File photo: A view of Changsha.

"The most sensitive content in transactions in progress is naturally the payment and return of the deposit," said Yan Yuejin, research director of the E-House Research Institute. Some cities have had similar housing return protection mechanisms in the past, but slow refunds led to low trust among homebuyers. Changsha's policy, by contrast, is highly binding.

The Changsha branch of the China Index Academy also believes that this move is both an innovative attempt by the government to promote the healthy development of the real estate market and an exploration of future real estate transaction models. It not only promotes real estate enterprises to improve their product quality and service levels, but also helps homebuyers make rational purchases and enhances consumers' purchasing confidence and satisfaction, which is conducive to building a more trustworthy and healthy real estate market environment at the same time.

As Yan Yuejin said, many places have previously explored "no-reason housing returns." In December 2023, at the initiative of the Wuhan Real Estate Development Association, Wuhan launched a "30-day no-reason housing return" campaign. During the campaign, when subscribing to homes at eight projects on sale, buyers could sign an additional no-reason housing return agreement and then choose one no-reason housing return within 30 days from the date of subscription, without any penalty.

Even earlier, in 2021, under the guidance of the Huizhou Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, the Huizhou Real Estate Industry Self-Discipline Committee and other parties jointly issued the "Plan on Advocating the Implementation of the 'Three-Day No-Reason Deposit Refund for Commercial Housing Sales' Rule," advocating that real estate enterprises across the city voluntarily join. For development projects of enterprises that signed this commitment agreement, homebuyers could apply for a refund within three calendar days from the date of signing the subscription agreement (counted from the second day after the date of signing).

"Changsha's move this time is generally carried out in an encouraging form, which also largely reflects the characteristics of industry self-discipline," Yan Yuejin said, adding that such practices also need to be further advanced.

It is worth mentioning that Changsha, a "top performer in property market regulation," has repeatedly introduced unconventional measures before. For example, in 2022, it creatively proposed that "housing that has completed online signing and filing for delivery or has completed real estate registration shall not be counted in the number of housing units owned by a household after being revitalized for use as rental housing," which was regarded as opening up channels among the new home, second-hand home, and rental housing markets.

With multiple favorable policies, the Changsha property market is also changing. Data from CRIC Hunan region shows that in May, supply of commercial residential housing in Changsha's five inner districts declined somewhat, while the number of newly launched projects increased. Transaction volume rose 40% month on month, the year-on-year decline narrowed, and average prices, affected by high-end projects, rose both year on year and month on month, showing clear signs of market recovery.