Dongguan relaxes home buying further

Reuters and staff reporter

Dongguan in Guangdong province has eased home-buying policies for the third time this year, narrowing the areas that will have restrictions on buying properties.

Earlier this year, the city joined several others in loosening its policies on the real-estate sector, including allowing families with two or three children to buy an additional residential property.

This came as China Evergrande (3333) is reaching out to its offshore creditors for their support to fight a lawsuit in a Hong Kong court aimed at liquidating the embattled property developer, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Evergrande, which is deemed to be in default on its nearly US$23 billion (HK$179.4 billion) offshore debt and is working on a debt restructuring plan, aims to submit the backing of creditors as part of the evidence to the court ahead of the first hearing on the winding-up petition on August 31, the person said.

Last week, Top Shine Global, an investor in Evergrande unit Fangchebao, said it had filed a winding-up petition against the developer as it had not honored a pact to repurchase shares from Top Shine in Fangchebao.

The developer was not considering an out-of-court settlement with Top Shine at the moment, the source said. The vast majority of its creditors oppose the winding-up petition, the source added.

Meanwhile, Sunac China (1918) said it has received resumption guidance from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and is taking appropriate steps to comply with it and the relevant listing rules.

In other news, KWG (1813) said its pre-sales in June dropped 54.6 percent to 4.68 billion yuan (HK$5.49 billion) from an earlier year.