A Study Into Legal Issues On Dispute Of Urban Citizens’ Purchase Of Rural Houses On Homesteads

Acceleration in urbanization has greatly raised the urban-rural population flow. Manyvillagers from rural areas have emigrated to cities, thus strange phenomena like“hollow village”,“village with old people”, etc. have gradually emerged incountryside. As urban real estate markets surge year by year, some citizens cannotsustain the high housing price in city and have to shift their sight to countryside wherethe housing price is relatively low, such that the instances have occurred that urbancitizens buy houses on rural homesteads. By normal logic line, this ought to benothing extraordinary. However, given the urban-rural dual land structure in ourcountry for the time being, there are relevant national documents that explicitly banrural homesteads from being circulated to personnel beyond this collective economicorganization. Acceleration in urbanization has multiplied or even doubled the value ofhouses on the original rural homesteads. Under the lure of tremendous benefits, thephenomenon has occurred that the sellers of houses on the original homesteads, forthe benefits of compensation for demolition, land appreciation or something else,contravene the principle of integrity and credibility, contending to the people’s courtthat the housing contract years ago takes no effect and claiming that the buyers of theyear restitute the houses. While the sellers are naturally unwilling to return the houses,therefore massive civil disputes have emerged. Currently, upon trying such kind ofcivil cases, the people’s courts of our country typically insist that such contracts beinvalid by principle while valid by exception. Although such verdict is muchconsistent with the national policy, yet close scrutiny reveals multiple problems. Suchcases have their own characteristics. First, it has been a long time since a majority ofthe buying-and-selling facts under dispute occurred. The buyer has already entered tolive, and in most cases the original house has been expanded or reconstructed.Afterwards, the seller contends to the court that the original house-purchase contractis invalid for the consideration of benefits. This paper adopts the research method ofcase analysis, taking the dispute case where Chen appeals Wang about the housebuying-and-selling contract as an example, and striving to explore reasonablecountermeasures to such problems by making judicial analysis on the case. First, themajor focuses of dispute between both parties involved in such cases is extracted fromthe case, namely the arguments over the contract validity and the validity of real righttransfer, and the issue of liability-undertaking once the contract is affirmed as being invalid. Next, a systematic judicial analysis is made on these focus issues. Throughanalysis, it is concluded that the problems of such cases are attributable to the fact thatthe current law of our country still has under-explicit provisions with regard to limiton circulation of private-owned houses on rural homesteads, while some nationalpolicy documents have set some restrictive stipulations, thus a lot of legal disputeshave arisen. Although the author’s conclusion favors the outcome of verdict by thecourt regarding such issues, the author thinks the real situation that the court basesjudgment on the policy documents should be perfected by law. Finally, somesuggestions are offered regarding the resolution to such problems. Consideration isgiven in three respects as perfection of legislation, perfection of rural propertyregistration institution, and perfection of urban indemnificatory housing. It is hopedthat these crude suggestions by the author can be helpful somewhat for resolution tosuch issues.