BEIJING, Aug 1:
The average home price in China’s 100 major cities edged up in July for the second straight month, reinforcing signs of a recovery in the property market even as the government seeks to spur broader economic growth, a private sector survey showed on Wednesday.
The average price of 8,717 yuan ($1,400) per square metre in the 100 cities surveyed was 0.33 percent higher than June, accelerating from June’s month-on-month increase of 0.05 percent, the China Real Estate Index System (CREIS) said.
The data from CREIS added to evidence that the property market is getting support from monetary policy easing and local governments which have tried to get around national property curbs that Chinese leaders have vowed to maintain.
The central government has sent eight ‘inspection teams’ to top cities to check whether local governments are enforcing property curbs in late July.
‘Property developers have scrapped discounts or even raise prices of new homes due to recovering property sales and changing market sentiment,’ CREIS, a consultancy affiliated with China’s largest online real estate company Soufun Holdings , said in a statement.
A recovery in the high-end expensive homes’ market has also fuelled an increase in home prices in July, the CREIS added.
But home prices in the 100 cities were still down by 1.77 percent in July from a year earlier, marking the fourth year-on-year fall since June 2011 when CREIS first began calculating the year-on-year change.
The average home price in China’s top 10 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, rose 0.27 percent from June but was down 2.32 percent year-on-year, the survey showed.
The Chinese government is due to publish data on home prices in 70 major Chinese cities for July on August 18. Home prices broke eight straight months of decline in June, official data showed. ($1 = 6.3627 Chinese yuan) (agencies)
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