NYT: “When the Chinese government announced new curbs on property prices this month, homeowners bombarded social networking sites with complaints. They formed long lines at property bureaus to register to sell their homes before the restrictions went into effect.
And some couples went even further: they filed for divorce.
Divorce filings shot up here and in other big cities across China this past week after rumors spread that one way to avoid the new 20 percent tax on profits from housing sales was to separate from a spouse, at least on paper.
The surge in divorce filings is the latest indication of how volatile an issue real estate has become in China in the past decade and how resistant people are to additional taxes.
Worried that housing prices are spiraling out of control and threatening social stability, the central government regularly rolls out measures aimed at damping demand and weeding out speculators.
Then home buyers, sellers, property developers and even local governments — which are typically heavily dependent on land sales for income — try to find ways to get around the restrictions.
“They always do this,” said Du Jinsong, a property analyst in Hong Kong for Credit Suisse. “When they implement new measures, people are always trying to circumvent the rules.”
China’s housing market has been one of the prime engines of economic growth in the past decade, and recently a sharp upturn in prices has reignited fears about inequality and a housing bubble.
On March 1, just days before the opening of China’s annual legislative session, the powerful State Council, which is led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, announced a series of new property measures that analysts say unsettled the housing market.
In its statement, the State Council, or cabinet, said that local governments should strictly enforce an earlier rule that ordered people selling a secondary home to pay a 20 percent tax on the profit.
Almost immediately, housing administration bureaus and real estate trading centers in big cities were flooded with people hoping to sell their apartments before the restrictions took effect. (Most local governments have not yet announced a deadline.)”
via Some Chinese Seek a Divorce to Avoid Real Estate Tax – NYTimes.com.
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