Banks in Harbin, capital of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, have been waiting for specific home mortgage rules from head offices recently, as many residents are inquiring about mortgage rule easings announced by the Chinese central bank on Sept 30.

According to the announcement made by the central bank and the China Banking Regulatory Commission before the National Day holiday, mortgages on a second home will be treated as a first mortgage if the buyer has no other outstanding mortgages.

Meanwhile, the central bank has reiterated that qualified home buyers will be allowed interest rates as low as 70 percent of the 6.55 percent benchmark mortgage rate to boost the sluggish housing demand.

Thanks to the easing measures, potential home buyers have restored confidence and have started searching for houses and turning to banks for mortgage details.

As headquarters are accelerating plans to carry out new lending rules, branch banks in Harbin can not discern the new policies at the moment. But they were certain that the current mortgage rules would be amended in line with the central bank’s policy. The amendments would differ from bank to bank according to the property market in Harbin.

"The central bank’s policy will be interpreted with different focuses among banks. Therefore, both the rulemaking and the execution may be different," a mortgage manager from a branch of Agricultural Bank of China in Harbin said.

China has unveiled a series of measures in recent years since the second half of 2010 to curb the speculation in its property market. Fearing the formation of asset bubbles and unsustainable economic growth contributed by the speculation in the real estate sector, the government introduced sets of administrative measures along with changes in monetary policies to tighten the property sales.

However, there were also concerns from authorities that excessive tightening might hurt economic growth. The government eased the monetary policy in 2012 with the introduction of interest rate cuts by the banks, and home prices across the country went up in 2013.

The government is now phasing out the administrative measures introduced previously to curb the property sales, especially easing the monetary policy. Some Harbin citizens believe that when the same discount in interest rates were allowed for mortgages in 2008 and 2012, the home prices rose in 2009 and 2013, respectively. As a result there will also be an increase in the housing price next year.