An employee sleeps at a real estate agency yesterday. Smaller cities led gains in home prices last month as Beijing, Shanghai and other larger metropolitan areas introduced local housing measures following new curbs from the Central Government, the statistics bureau said on its Web site Friday. New home prices in the central city of Yueyang surged the most among 70 cities monitored by the government, rising 12 percent from a year earlier, while the western city of Lanzhou jumped 11 percent, the bureau said
Property inflation edges down on curbs
Prices fell in 9 cities, flat in another 5 in Feb. m/m
CHINA S property prices increased at their slowest pace in more than a year in February after a succession of policy moves by the government to cool the real estate market.
New home prices in 70 major Chinese cities rose 5.7 percent in February from a year earlier, down from an annual rise of 5.9 percent in January, according to a Reuters weighted average of official data published Friday.
With prices still rising, albeit more slowly, there is little chance of the government relaxing its tightening stance, and developers could be forced to cut prices more sharply later this year as transaction volumes fall, analysts said.
The real estate market will be very sluggish this year, said Hui Jianqiang, head of research at E-House China in Shanghai.
New home prices increased by 6.8 percent in Beijing in February from a year earlier, level with January s pace, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. In Shanghai, prices rose 2.3 percent year on year, up from 1.5 percent in January, the NBS said in a statement on its Web site.
It added that new home prices rose in 68 of the 70 cities in February from a year earlier.
On a month-on-month basis, property inflation was more muted.
Nationwide, prices were up 0.4 percent, compared with a 0.8 percent increase in January, according to the Reuters calculations.
New home prices fell in nine cities in February from a month earlier. Three cities had posted declines in January, the NBS said.
China has taken a slew of steps to contain property inflation since late 2009, including a trial of a long-debated property tax in Shanghai and Chongqing that began in January.
The Chinese statistics agency tracks residential property price changes in 70 major cities, but stopped publishing a nationwide index after it changed the way it collects data at the start of this year.
The slower increase in property price inflation is reasonable as a correction to rapid surges last year, Hui said. A deeper slide is possible towards the end of the year if the country s largest developers begin to cut prices, he added.
(SD-Agencies)
