THE country’s home price inflation slowed to an eight-month low in March, extending to a third month a loss of momentum in a property market that has been a strong spot in the world’s second-largest economy.
Average new-home prices in 70 major cities rose 7.7 percent in March from a year earlier, easing from the previous month’s 8.7 percent rise, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday. In month-on-month terms, prices rose 0.2 percent in March, slowing from February’s rise of 0.3 percent.
Analysts said the cooling of the property market is an initial indication of stabilization and they expected the easing trend to continue this year.
China’s property market has lost steam since late 2013 as authorities tightened controls on speculative buying, and as banks made it harder for homebuyers and small developers to get loans.
There have been other indications of weakness in the sector, such as falling investment and slowing gains in land prices, raising some concern that the sector is becoming a risk to the government’s engineered slowdown of the economy.
The government has spent more than four years trying to tame record home prices on concerns that they were stoking an asset bubble, and some see the efforts bearing fruit.
The NBS data showed home prices increased year on year in 69 of the 70 cities monitored, unchanged from February. Wenzhou, a center for private businesses, was the only city where house prices fell in March, dropping 3.9 percent from a year ago.
On a month-on-month basis, four cities, including Wenzhou and Haikou in the far south, saw home prices drop, while 10 cities, including Hangzhou and Ningbo, saw prices unchanged from the previous month, the NBS said.(SD-Agencies)
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