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In 1999, in order to stimulate the housing market demand and reduce the unused commercial housing stock, Guangzhou launched a groundbreaking policy: buying a house would give you a household registration.

With one hand they paid for a house and in the other they received a household registration book with a blue stamp. Thousands of "identityless" farmers got out of poverty and transformed themselves into "city dwellers".

Although the Blue Silver Household Registration is not a formal permanent residence registration, it can enjoy the same benefits as a permanent residence registration. Its functions are basically the same as the current talent green card, and it can be "regularized" after meeting certain conditions.

Source: Ping An Guangzhou

In fact, it is not just Guangzhou. In the late 1990s, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen also implemented similar policies.

An article on Sohu City mentioned that Shanghai implemented the blue-print household registration system from 1994 to 2002. In the past eight years, a total of 42,000 people obtained blue-print household registration and became new citizens of Shanghai, of which 88% were home buyers.

Guangzhou's blue-stamp household registration system was implemented for only five years before it was phased out. In the following 20 years, no matter how the economy and property market slumped, the household registration system was unable to be shaken.

However, on August 6, the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau of Huadu District, Guangzhou City, issued "Several Measures to Further Promote the Stable and Healthy Development of the Real Estate Market", and the gears of fate began to turn again: buying a house in a first-tier city and giving away household registration is back in business!

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The "settlement" conditions in first-tier cities are no longer a set of strict criteria, but have been simplified to a house.

According to the statement in the document, non-Guangzhou residents who purchase newly built commercial housing in Huadu District can receive the Huadu District Talent Green Card "Hua Card" and enjoy the treatment of Huadu's "quasi-hukou".

Although it is not a Guangzhou household registration in the strict sense, the children of home buyers can attend public kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools with the "flower card", which is exactly the same as the logic of giving blue-stamp household registration when buying a house.

After all, according to current policies, children of non-Guangzhou residents can generally only go to private schools in Guangzhou, where tuition fees are usually over 10,000 yuan per semester, and they cannot enjoy affordable and high-quality public education resources.

Now that you have obtained a talent green card, it probably won’t be difficult to settle down there later.

In the past, the threshold for an outsider to get a "Huaka" was not low.

Either they must have at least a master's degree, or a bachelor's degree from a domestic 985/211 or a top 500 foreign university, or they must be middle or senior management or technical personnel of enterprises in the district, or they must be high-level and highly skilled talents recognized by the district, including famous school principals, famous teachers, outstanding medical experts, and leading talents in various industries.

The green card, which was originally issued to talents, is now open to ordinary people, and has even been simplified to settling down by purchasing a house. Does this mean that these days, those who buy houses are all talents?

This small step by Guangzhou has fired the first shot of the "buy a house and get a hukou" policy in first-tier cities. At this critical moment, hukou has once again been entrusted with the important task of supporting the property market.

Data from the China Index Academy shows that as of June this year, Huadu's new home inventory exceeded 13,000 units, and the destocking cycle exceeded 2 years. In the first half of the year, Huadu bought less than 3,000 new homes, and the task of destocking is far from being completed.

Other cities facing similar difficulties include Zengcheng and Nansha in the outer districts, and Baiyun, Panyu and Liwan in the main urban areas, where the sales cycle has reached more than 20 months.

It is bold to imagine that these districts may be discussing the feasibility of "buying a house and getting a household registration for free". We can wait and see when it can be implemented.

When it comes to rescuing the property market, Guangzhou is always the first among first-tier cities to "break the defense", whether it is loosening the purchase restrictions or lowering down payments and mortgage rates.

To be more daring, the suburbs of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are also facing the dilemma of inventory accumulation and difficulty in selling. Perhaps they will also start testing the waters soon?

After all, Beijing and Shanghai household registration are still hard currency today, and there are many people interested in them.

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In fact, before Guangzhou took action, strong second-tier cities and provincial capitals had already joined the "demolition operation" against the household registration walls.

According to incomplete statistics from "Caijing Magazine", in addition to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin, among the country's megacities with a permanent population of more than 10 million, Chongqing, Chengdu, Dongguan, Wuhan and Hangzhou have all introduced policies that allow people to settle down by purchasing a house.

Among the megacities with a population of over 5 million, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Jinan, Hefei, Shenyang, Qingdao, Changsha, Suzhou, etc. have also successively introduced policies of settling down by buying a house.

Big northern cities such as Qingdao and Shenyang have lowered the threshold even further, directly offering the option of “settling down by renting a house”.

Generally speaking, the household registration system will be relaxed according to the population level, with small and medium-sized cities taking the lead, followed by ordinary large cities, and super-large cities as the final. With the addition of Guangzhou, we are witnessing history again.

As a "killer" move twenty years ago, "buy a house and get a household registration" made thousands of people willing to spend all their assets to get the identity of a city dweller, thus saving the real estate market which was on the brink of crisis.

Twenty years later, cities that still pin their hopes on this may be disappointed.

Why did people sell everything they had to buy a household registration back then?

Because there are a lot of benefits tied to the hukou, such as education, pension, medical care, home purchase, etc. Whether you have a hukou or not, the public services you enjoy are very different.

One netizen recalled that in the 1990s, people from other provinces had to pay a sponsorship fee to attend kindergarten in Guangzhou, and had to pay school selection fees for primary schools. After paying for the school, there was little money left from their parents' salary, and they almost had to bite their teeth and buy a Guangzhou hukou. They had to go back to their place of household registration to take the college entrance examination.

When we implemented the household registration system, our essence was to allocate limited resources based on household registration.

When there are too many people, resources are often insufficient, including housing.

This is why the “blue-stamp household registration” was suspended after only a few years. At the beginning of the century, the urban population grew rapidly, the inventory of commercial housing decreased, and even began to fall short of demand.

Now, with the advancement of equalization of public services, the welfare benefits that a hukou can bring are quite limited. Naturally, buying a house and settling down have lost a lot of motivation.

For example, even if you don’t have a hukou, you can still go to the hospital to get medical insurance reimbursed if you pay for it at your place of work. Except for first-tier cities, Tianjin, and Hainan, there are no restrictions on house purchases, and people with or without a hukou are treated equally.

The only thing that has not been resolved seems to be education.

However, as the last wave of "baby boom" enrollment has passed, public kindergartens are beginning to be unable to enroll children, and this will soon spread to primary schools. Will non-hukou children also be able to attend public schools in the near future?

By that time, the value of the household registration will continue to decline.

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Of course, the more fundamental reason why the "buy a house and get a household registration" rescue policy has limited effect is that the largest urbanization movement in history is coming to an end, and the supply and demand relationship in the housing market has reversed.

The "China Housing Stock Estimation Report: 2024" shows that China's urban housing occupancy rate will be 1.07 in 2023, and the occupancy rate in first-tier, second-tier, third-tier and fourth-tier cities will be 1.01, 1.09 and 1.12 respectively.

Among major developed countries, the housing-to-household ratio in the United States and Japan is 1.17, in Germany it is 1.03, and in the United Kingdom it is 1.02. We are already at a similar level.

The overall surplus does not affect the local balance or even shortage. The era of worthless houses has come, but there are always some houses that can still maintain and increase their value in the long run.

Population is the long-term anchor of housing prices. Entering the era of negative population growth, except for a few core cities, the permanent population of most cities has turned into a net outflow.

The "China Population Mobility Trend Report 2022 Edition" points out a disturbing fact: China's population mobility has changed from a 4:6 split to a 2:8 split, and the number of regions with population outflow is on the rise.

Excluding 10 regions that are difficult to identify due to missing data, the number of regions with population outflow increased from 1,375 to 1,676 from 2000-2010 to 2010-2020, and the proportion increased from 63.9% to 77.9%.

Overall, the era of the hukou being worthless has arrived. However, cities chosen by the mobile population still have value, and hukou restrictions will be retained until the last moment.