BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s new home prices declined again in July, falling 0.3% on month, but the drop narrowed slightly in major cities, official data showed on Friday, as more local governments rolled out incentives for homebuying.
The month-on-month figure, calculated by Reuters based on data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, extended a weak trend that has persisted since May 2023. Prices fell 0.3% on month in June.
Of the 70 cities surveyed, 60 reported month-on-month declines, with the pace of falls slightly narrowing in tier-one cities.
On an annual basis, new home prices fell 2.8% in July, versus a 3.2% drop in June.
Notably, year-on-year declines are narrowing modestly across tier-one, tier-two, and tier-three cities.
Reviving the real estate sector, which in its heyday accounted for roughly a quarter of China’s economic activity, is a key task for policymakers as they strive to meet the country’s annual GDP growth target of “around 5%” amid domestic and external headwinds.
A sustained recovery in the housing market has remained elusive despite multiple rounds of policies to stimulate demand and help qualified developers with their liquidity shortages.
The central government has in the past few months continued to call for stabilising the property market, signalling further policy support.
An increasing number of local governments have relaxed rules for people to use their provident funds to pay for home purchases. Some also offered subsidies for buying homes.
Capital city Beijing in August scrapped curbs for qualified buyers to purchase homes in the city’s suburban areas, though it kept the curbs in place within the fifth ring road, a major expressway around the central area.
(Reporting by Liangping Gao, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes and Sonali Paul)
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