BANK lending to China’s property market increased in the fourth quarter of 2015, official data showed Friday, another sign of mild recovery in the housing market.

    Outstanding loans to property developers and homebuyers at the end of December were 21 percent higher than a year earlier, central bank data showed. At the end of September, the total was 20.9 percent bigger than the year-earlier level.

    In a sign of buoyant home sales, mortgages rose 23.2 percent by the end of December from a year earlier, quickening from annual growth of 17.5 percent in 2014, according to a statement on the People’s Bank of China’s website.

    China’s housing market bottomed last year after the government took a barrage of measures to revive the key sector to arrest an economic slowdown.

    Official data showed Tuesday that property sales hit 1.3 billion square meters in December, up 17.6 percent from November and 6.5 percent higher than a year earlier.

    Still, the recovery in the housing market remains uneven across the country as small cities face huge unsold inventories, discouraging developers from launching projects.(SD-Agencies)