Hainan Economic and Business New Observation: New Housing Policies Help Address People's Livelihood Issues

Ask AI · How can the new housing fund policy help families activate their funds to support stable housing?

China News Service Haikou, April 2 — Starting from April 1, 2026, housing provident fund contributors in Hainan Province may withdraw their housing provident fund to support their children in purchasing their first home for their household. On April 2, Wang Shiming, Deputy Director of the Hainan Housing Provident Fund Management Bureau, provided an interpretation of this policy at a press conference. He said that the new policy innovatively broadens the scope of withdrawals, allowing parents to withdraw the balances in their personal housing provident fund account to support their children in purchasing the first household’s newly built commercial housing or second-hand owner-occupied housing in Hainan, effectively alleviating the people’s livelihood pain point of young people “who can’t afford to buy a house,” and extending the protective role of the housing provident fund system from individual coverage to empowering families.

With the customs closure of Hainan Free Trade Port coming into operation, more and more young people and new residents are converging in Hainan. How to help them ease home-purchase pressure and support the steady, healthy development of the real estate market has become one of the directions for Hainan to continue exploring reform and innovation. Wang Shiming said that the core highlights of this new policy lie in establishing a new pattern of housing security featuring intergenerational mutual assistance and coordinated use of funds, so that the stock of housing provident fund balances in the housing provident fund accounts of the parent contributors can truly be made “active.” Simply put, the housing provident fund that parents have contributed can now be withdrawn and used to pay their children’s home-purchase payments(.

The new policy strictly anchors itself to rigid housing needs and clarifies that withdrawing housing provident fund is only applicable when children purchase their first home for their household), including newly built commercial housing and second-hand owner-occupied housing(. It implements the national requirement of “housing is for living, not for speculation” from a system perspective. At the same time, the new policy follows the principles of family voluntariness and reasonable mutual assistance, and clarifies that withdrawal should be prioritized from the housing provident fund account funds of the children and their spouses, and that only the remaining balance (if insufficient) may be withdrawn from the parents’ housing provident fund account. Parents may, based on their own financial situation, decide independently whether to withdraw and how much to withdraw to support their children’s home purchases.

To ensure that the new policy is implemented effectively and benefits people’s livelihoods, the Hainan Housing Provident Fund Management Bureau relies on a government data-sharing mechanism. For any information—such as relationship-affirming materials, home purchase contracts, home purchase invoices, and property ownership certificates—that can be obtained through online data, paper materials will no longer be required in all cases, which greatly reduces the application documents needed and improves administrative efficiency. Meanwhile, by optimizing payment methods, it supports contributors in paying the funds in their housing provident fund accounts directly to real estate developers for use in paying their children’s home-purchase payments according to the provisions of the contract filed for record through online signing, thereby effectively easing the pressure of the down payment.

“From the perspective of Hainan’s provincial conditions and development needs, promoting the steady and healthy development of the real estate market is conducive to advancing the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port in a stable and far-sighted manner.” Wang Shiming said that at present many young employees face funding pressure when buying a home, and rigid housing needs urgently need to be met. Launching the business allowing contributors to withdraw housing provident fund for their children to purchase homes is not only a key measure to fully release the dividends of the housing provident fund system and precisely support employees’ families’ rigid housing needs, but also a concrete practice of adhering to the people-centered development philosophy, effectively reducing the home-purchase burden on employees’ families, and promoting the important people’s livelihood goal that broad groups of employees can live in homes, with living that is safe, comfortable, and suitable). End(