New home prices in China's 70 major cities rose at a slightly slower pace in February from the previous month, following a range of government curbs aimed at tempering speculative demand.
Average new home prices in China's 70 major cities rose 0.2 per cent in February from the previous month, compared with an increase of 0.3 per cent in January, Reuters calculated from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data out on Monday.
New home prices rose 5.2 per cent in February versus a year earlier, picking up from a 5.0 per cent increase in January.
China's home prices have slowly leveled out in the big cities in recent months while some smaller cities are still seeing appreciable rises despite the increasingly stringent cooling measures.
The National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement that prices were "stable while slightly lower" last month, as eleven major cities fell year on year.
Of the four cities in Jiangsu listed under the national monitoring schemed, Yangzhou and Xuzhou saw slight increase in new home prices while Nanjing and Wuxi witnessed slight decline.
The same is of true of the second home prices with slight increase reported in Yangzhou and Xuzhou and minor decline in Nanjing and Wuxi.
China's housing market has boomed since late 2015, giving a major boost to the economy, but is expected to gradually slow as measures to curb property speculation drag on sales.
Policymakers are focusing in 2018 on stable property market development, aiming to keep residential properties for habitation, not speculation, Chinese premier Li Keqiang said earlier this month.
(Source:Jiangsu International Channel)
