China's new home prices extend declines despite policy support
By Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo
BEIJING (Reuters) -China's new home prices slowed their month-on-month declines in January with the biggest cities seeing some stabilisation, but the nationwide downward trend persisted despite Beijing's efforts to revive demand.
New home prices fell 0.3% month-on-month in January after dipping 0.4% in December, according to Reuters calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data on Friday.
China has been ramping up measures to arrest a property downturn, including ordering state banks to boost lending to residential projects under a «whitelist» mechanism. More big cities including Shanghai have also eased purchase curbs to lure homebuyers.
Last month, home prices in tier-one cities fell 0.3% on month, smaller than their 0.4% decline in December, partly due to additional support measures including a reduction in down-payments.
Among 70 cities surveyed by NBS, Shanghai saw the biggest month-on-month increase with a rise of 0.4%, while the remaining three tier-one cities — Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen — posted smaller home prices declines than most tier-two and tier-three centres.
The number of cities that saw monthly price falls in January also decreased, but the overall market remained on a clear downtrend with buyer sentiment still very weak.
From a year earlier, home prices fell 0.7%, marking the sharpest drop in 10 months. That was despite a low statistical base in January 2023 when prices dropped 1.5% year-on-year due to COVID-19 disruptions.
Nie Wen, an economist at Hwabao Trust, said home price declines could persist.
«It may take more than a year for the entire property market to fully recover and rebound,» Nie said.
Central bank data released on Feb. 9 showed
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