New | Owners’ angry protests show why Beijing must tip toe in curbing the property market

Scores of Beijing homebuyers staged a protest outside the city’s housing authority on Wednesday, highlighting rising social tensions sparked by the local government’s unprecedented home purchase tightening policies that protesters say trample on their property rights.

On Wednesday morning, about 40 buyers of apartments gathered outside the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Development to demand the government ease a restriction that crippled the value of their assets.

Hundreds of thousands of property owners have been hit by the restrictions and several protests and ongoing negotiations between them and developers have taken place in the past month without results.

Zhang Fanfan, a Beijing artist and artwork dealer, was one of them – shocked to see the value of her assets cut in half overnight.

The 37-year-old started living in Beijing in 1998, and since then has used her income from selling her Chinese paintings and other artists’ works to buy seven such apartments in the capital. On March 19, she paid 1.08 million yuan (US$156,700) for her eighth apartment, this one in Liangxiang, 40 kilometres southwest of downtown Beijing. A week later, she was told the apartment was “not recognised” under law.

On March 26, as part of a broader campaign to curb frenetic home purchases and skyrocketing prices in the capital, Beijing authorities banned sales to individuals of new “apartments” built on plots that were originally acquired as commercial or office land.

For existing apartments built on such land, only those with Beijing hukou – and non-hukou holders who have paid social security for five consecutive years and do not already own a home – can buy such property.