NEW home prices in China stalled for the first time in nearly five years in February, as the coronavirus outbreak kept property showrooms shut and potential buyers at home.

Average new home prices in China’s 70 major cities were unchanged in February from a month earlier, compared with January’s 0.2 percent rise, media calculated from official data yesterday.

It marks the first time home prices stopped rising since April 2015.

On an annual basis, prices rose 5.8 percent in February, decelerating from a 6.3 percent increase in January and the slowest pace since July 2018.

Property investment fell at its fastest pace on record last month. Analysts expect March figures to be even worse.

The coronavirus epidemic “dealt a blow” to the property market, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a separate statement.

Developers were forced to close display units to avoid gatherings of large numbers of people, and almost 50 percent of showrooms were still closed at the end of February, according to Citic Securities Co.

Nineteen cities, including Wuhan, had no transactions last month, so prices there were considered to be unchanged, the statistics bureau said.

Moves to discount apartments to keep sales ticking over also helped fuel the slowdown. China Evergrande Group offered discounts of as much as 25 percent at many of its projects last month, and while sales surged, its average selling price declined 3 percent.

Despite those numbers, NBS spokesman Mao Shengyong said short-term policies to support the property market were not among the government’s broad suite of stimulus options.

(SD-Agencies)