Shanghai is lowering second-home down payments. Will it boost the property market?

Shanghai has announced further cuts to minimum down‑payment requirements for homebuyers, joining Beijing to become the latest top-tier Chinese city to ease curbs in the hopes of engineering a broad recovery for the country’s struggling property market. The minimum down payment for buying a second home was reduced from 20 to 15 per cent, bringing it in line with the threshold for first-time homebuyers, the local government announced on Thursday. Encouraging a recovery in new-home sales is part of