New and pre-owned home prices in China’s major cities continued to increase at a slower pace, and the latest measures to promote the healthy development of the property sector are expected to further stabilize market expectations, said experts. In November, most of the 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities saw very modest growth in new and pre-owned home prices compared to a year ago, and their month-on-month growth rate also fell, said Sheng Guoqing, Chief Statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics’ Urban Division. New home prices in the 70 biggest cities rose 2.4% year-on-year in November, but dipped 0.3% from October. Among them, up to 59 cities reported negative growth in new home prices month-on-month. The four biggest cities saw little change in their average new home prices from the previous month. Beijing and Shanghai reported price increases of 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, while Shenzhen remained unchanged and Guangzhou declined 0.6%.
Compared with a year earlier, the benchmark cities’ new home prices grew at a slower pace of 4.8%. The 31 second-tier cities tracked by the NBS slid 0.4% on average month-on-month, and their average prices grew 3.3% compared to last year. Among the 35 third-tier cities, the two figures were a negative 0.3% and positive 1.4% respectively. “This is the third month in a row for the new home price index to drop month-on-month, indicating that more property developers were promoting properties under mounting pressure from destocking of residential homes,” said Yan Yuejin, Director of the Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institution. In order to stabilize home prices amid cooling market sentiment, bringing about rational home consumption is important to reach a supply-and-demand balance, Yan said. The pre-owned home market showed a similar trend. Prices in the four first-tier cities edged down 0.2% from the previous month. In the 31 second-tier cities, used home prices declined 0.4% from a month ago, but grew 2.0% year-on-year. The 35 third-tier cities saw their existing home prices drop 0.4% from the previous month, against an increase of 0.5% from last year, the China Daily reports.
Property investment stood at around CNY13.73 trillion in the first 11 months, data from the NBS showed. Compared with the same period in 2019, property investment climbed 13.2%, putting the two-year average at 6.4%.
