1) 1 year minimum residency with Student or Work Visa (in order to buy property)
Does this rule still apply, or has it been lifted only in Beijing, but in other parts of china, you still need to meet the 1yrs residency requirement?
Assuming, we need to be resident for 1 year, can you buy in a cities different from where you lived?

2) 1 year minimum residency with Student or Work Visa (in order exchange FX into RMB).
I am pretty sure that a bank will only allow you buy more than 50kUSD/year only if a)you are buying a house and b) if you have been living in China more than a year.

So, it looks to me that while rule 1) may (or may not) have been lifted (and maybe only in BJ), you still need to in China for more than one year, otherwise you have no funds to buy the property. So, my current understanding is that, for all practical purposes, you kind of still really need the 1year residency.

3) Buy to rent out or buy more than one apartment
My understanding is that foreigners can only buy to live in and not for investment. This would imply that a) cannot rent out (because it would be an investment) and b) cannot buy two or more (as you can only live in one place at the time...although some people do otherwise:))
Perhaps, you can buy the house, leave it empty and live somewhere. but there would be no rental income.
Can this rule be flexed (legally), if you buy one property in one province and another in another province?

5) What happens when you sell the house. How can you a) convert the sale proceeds from RMB into USD and b) send USD back home. Do the usual max daily conversion/transfer apply, or given that the money comes from the sale of an apartment and the funds (at least purchasing costs) came from abroad in the first place, through the documented process (2), there will be no problem in taking the money back home

thanks gdbill for your useful answers.

this is one of the many articles I read about the restriction being lifted (it is for 2009, so I am not sure it is still in place for 2010)

http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2009/01/26/beijing-lifts-restrictions...

after making a few phone calls to various offices in charge for the transfer of property, I noticed that, while this 1-year policy is still in force, in practise its application is pretty relaxed and it depends much on the city, the area within the city and if the guy in the office is in a good mood.

A little trickier is to get the FX exchange through as, almost every bank follows PBC/SAFE 6 point rule, that include the minimum one year residency. Again, there is some flexibility on the application of this rule and individual bank managers in various cities have different ways to check if this condition is met.

To summarise, these are anecdotal information I gathered around, but have not actually gone through the process myself, so I cannot guarantee it is correct. But you can tell your friend to shop around various districts on Beijing and various banks to see what answers they give.

thanks again