THE country’s home price growth weakened for a third month in August, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed yesterday.

New home prices in 70 cities, excluding State-subsidized housing, rose 0.16 percent last month from July, the slowest pace this year, official data showed. Values in the secondary market dropped for the first time since February last year, down 0.02 percent from a month earlier.

Vice Premier Han Zheng said in July that the property sector shouldn’t be used as a short-term boost for the economy. Residential sales dropped for the first time in almost seven years that month, according to Bloomberg calculations based on official data.

“Tightening over the real estate sector has been unprecedented recently, and it’s clearly had an impact,” Song Hongwei, a research director at Tospur Real Estate Consulting Co., said before the figures were released. “More developers are resorting to price cuts to recoup cash, as it becomes harder to get proceeds from mortgages and other fundraising methods.”(SD-Agencies)