Huzhou in East China's Zhejiang Province on Tuesday said it would encourage state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to purchase apartments from struggling real estate developers to use as indemnificatory and resettled housing, according to a notice released by the local Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. 

The move could help ease the inventory pressure for some real estate companies. By involving different aspects and capital, such as state-owned enterprises, it offers a new approach to help solve the current problems facing the real estate sector, as well as a new housing supply pattern for the SOEs, Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Currently, some real estate developers are under pressure with their inventory, while some cities have demand for indemnificatory and resettled housing. By linking supply and demand, it could help promote the healthy development of the sector, Yan noted.

Some cities in China have been encouraging SOEs to build indemnificatory and resettled housing in recent years as one move to promote supply-side structural reform of the housing sector. Generally the houses could be rented at lower-than-market-level prices to firms' own employees or new graduates in the city with no houses, and other groups.

China's housing sector has been facing downward pressure with some developers struggling with strained liquidity and debt problems. In order to help ease the predicament, developers and governments have been rolling out different measures. 

In addition to encouraging SOEs to buy apartments, Huzhou also announced it would step up efforts to deal with risky projects.

Huizhou in South China's Guangdong province has introduced a new policy to lower the minimum down payment for first-time home buyers to 20 percent, bjnews.com.cn reported on Tuesday. 

Some developers in Central China's Henan even came up with a promotion activity allowing the use of wheat to offset part of the down payments, although this was later called off, according to media reports. 

The real estate authorities in Sixian county, East China's Anhui Province issued a document on Wednesday via its official WeChat account to encourage government officials and their families and friends to purchase properties, in order to stabilize the local real estate market. 

The document stated that there are 32 real estate programs operating in the county seat area, and home buyers can enjoy financial support, school access and talent recruitment. While the article now has been removed by the press time.

In July, new home prices in first-tier cities rose 0.3 percent on a monthly basis, narrowing 0.2 percentage points from the previous month, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday.

With many support policies being rolled out, the overall downward trend of the housing sector has been eased this year, Fu Linghui, a spokesperson from the NBS, said on Monday at a press conference.