New home prices pick up in 39 Chinese cities

While major centres recorded significant to mild increases, China’s statistics bureau – the NBS – stated that prices increased in only 39 of 70 cities surveyed in December, a modest increase on the 33 level of November.

More Chinese cities saw home prices recover in December as policy easing helped boost demand, official data showed on Monday.

China’s top leadership urged the reduction of property inventory late a year ago and included destocking in five economic targets for 2016.

Growth in real estate investment slowed to one per cent in 2015 from the previous year, compared with an increase of 1.3 per cent in January-November.

New home prices soared 47.5 percent year on year in southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, the sharpest increase last month among the country’s major cities, while the steepest decline was registered by the northeastern city of Dandong, where prices dropped 5.3 percent.

China has cut interest rates six times since November 2014, and lowered the amount of cash banks have to set aside as reserves. Mining output growth decelerated to 2.7 percent from 4.5 percent in 2014.

In addition, the central bank a year ago also scaled back down-payment requirements for purchases of first and second homes, allowing buyers to borrow more.

Housing sales totalled 7.28 trillion yuan ($1.11 trillion) for the whole of 2015, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.

Compared with the same month of the previous year, house prices climbed in 21 out of the 70 cities in December, while it fell in 49 cities.

Official data showed property investment, a crucial driver of the economy, grew just 1.3 percent in the first 11 months of 2015 from a year earlier, the lowest rate since early 2009.