Urban renewal is related to the improvement of urban appearance and living quality, and is an important lever for expanding domestic demand. China's urban development has entered an important period of urban renewal, shifting from large-scale incremental construction to a focus on improving the quality of existing infrastructure and adjusting the incremental structure. The State Council executive meeting held on January 3rd studied and promoted urban renewal work, proposing to accelerate the transformation of old urban communities, blocks, factories, and urban villages. We need to strengthen the guarantee of land use, funding and other factors, activate the utilization of inefficient existing land, coordinate and make good use of fiscal and financial resources, improve market-oriented financing models, and attract social capital to participate in urban renewal. Due to the numerous safety hazards and poor living environment, residents have an urgent desire for renovation, and the renovation of urban villages has become an important part of urban renewal. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued a notice in 2024 proposing that projects in prefecture level cities that can balance funds and have mature expropriation and compensation plans can be included in the scope of policy support. By 2024, the renovation of urban villages will expand to over 300 cities, and 1790 urban village renovation projects will be implemented. In 2025, in order to continuously promote the stabilization of the real estate market, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development will intensify the implementation of urban village and dilapidated house renovation, promote monetary resettlement, and plan to continue expanding the scale of renovation on the basis of adding 1 million sets of urban village renovation and dilapidated house renovation. Chen Jie, director of the Housing and Urban Rural Development Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, believes that effectively promoting the transformation of urban villages in an orderly manner can lay a solid foundation for improving people's livelihoods, achieving economic development, and maintaining social security in the long run; At present, it can also directly play multiple roles in stabilizing residents' expectations, stimulating consumption potential, and filling investment gaps. Data shows that in just 35 major cities, there are 1.7 million urban villages that need to be renovated. After the expansion of policy support for the renovation of urban villages, it is expected to drive greater demand. Xia Lei, Chief Economist of Guohai Securities, said that it is estimated that monetary resettlement will drive the conversion of 200 million square meters of commercial housing by implementing the renovation of 1 million new urban villages and dilapidated houses. After reasonably adjusting the land planning conditions of urban villages, it can also better adapt to market demand and drive about 500 billion yuan in construction and installation investment for the original site. The transformation of urban villages is a complex and arduous systematic project that requires a large amount of capital investment. The head of the relevant department of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development introduced that eligible urban village renovation projects can receive policy support, including being included in the scope of local government special bond support, providing special loans for urban village renovation by development and policy financial institutions, applying relevant tax and fee preferential policies, encouraging commercial banks to provide urban village renovation loans in accordance with market-oriented and rule of law principles, etc., to ensure the smooth progress of the project. Yu Xiaofen, Dean of the China Housing and Real Estate Research Institute at Zhejiang University of Technology, said that this notice requires all regions to strictly implement the "one project, two plans" policy, which means that each project must develop a complete collection and compensation plan, fund balance plan, etc., to ensure that the project conditions are mature before starting implementation, avoid the risk of new local government debt, ensure the smooth progress of collection work, and effectively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the people. The head of the relevant department of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development stated that each region should consider the local real estate market situation, coordinate the stock and increment of commercial housing, and steadily promote the monetization and resettlement of urban village renovation. This can better meet the needs of the masses to choose their own housing types, locations, etc., shorten their transition time outside, and enable residents to move into new houses as soon as possible. (New Society)