State Council consolidates property registries
Consolidation of scattered property lists would aid Beijing's efforts to enact land reforms, crackdown on graft and cool overheated market
The central government has consolidated its scattered property registries under a single agency, a move seen as instrumental to a host of major policy objectives from controlling the property market to cracking down on official corruption.
In a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, the State Council decided yesterday to give the Ministry of Land and Resources overall authority over the registration of land, buildings, prairies, forests and coastal waters.
The central government will set up a database to ease information-sharing about transactions, registrations and other administrative approvals of real properties across different departments. The public would also be allowed to inquire about the information to "safeguard their legitimate rights", according to a State Council statement.
The central government has long viewed the ownership of land and buildings on the same land as separate interests and maintained separate registration systems for each. A building is registered with the Ministry of Housing and Rural-Urban Development while the land beneath it is listed with the Ministry of Land and Resources.
The disconnected registries have helped enable corrupt officials to conceal ill-gotten assets. In February, a senior Lufeng police official, Zhao Haibin, was sacked after he was accused of owning 192 houses in Huizhou , as well as others in Shenzhen and Zhuhai .
The scattered databases have also presented a hurdle for Beijng in its effort to institute a property tax because there is no single place to go to determine how many properties are owned by each potential taxpayer.