ABOUT TWO MONTHS after Beijing introduced stricter policies to control the realty market, the number of secondhand apartment deals has fallen abruptly. As a result of the cooling market, two leading real estate chains in the capital have reportedly lowered their service fees in order to encourage deals. Beijing News comments:

Previously, Homelink charged 2.7 percent and 5i5j charged 2.5 percent of the total purchase price as their commission. Those percentages were about the same as the fees charged by agencies in other cities, but as the average price of secondhand apartments in Beijing is almost 60,000 yuan ($8,696.9) per square meter, it is common for people to pay more than 100,000 yuan to the real estate companies when buying or selling an apartment.

In comparison, the average annual income of employees in Beijing was 85,038 yuan in 2015. In other words, the service fee of a common apartment deal exceeds a year's salary for an average employee in Beijing.