BEIJING (Reuters).- China’s housing minister has promised to preserve the market for real estate this year. He did so after a number of regulations were implemented that sought to rein in sector debt. The regulation resulted in a sharp slowdown in property sales.

The deleveraging campaign by regulators against the property bubble led to falling prices and lower construction start rates. It also caused defaults at several heavily indebted businesses and threatened some residential housing development projects.

Since then, the authorities have taken a number of steps to increase sales and sentiment. They require fewer down payments for first-time buyers as well as allowing commercial banks lower mortgage rates.

Wang Menghui from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development stated at a press conference that China has a strong genuine housing demand. This is because more than 11 million Chinese are now employed in urban areas every year.

Wang believes that large homes are a common desire for many people, which is partly due to COVID-19 strict control.

China will offer affordable housing units of 2.4 million units this year. Wang stated that China has already provided 942,000 units to meet the demand for 3 million households last year.

Analysts believe that property regulations will not be loosen across the board.

Wang declared that China would maintain continuity and stability in policy measures and will also strengthen the coordination and precision of those measures.

Ni Hong, Vice Housing Minister at the news conference stated that government would continue to remove project delivery risk from some property developers because of their defaults on debt.