Phantom sell-off (4)

Little impact?

A total of 345,908 new homes and 1.13 million second-hand properties were offered for sale in Guangzhou and Shanghai in December, according to statistics from property information portal soufun.com.

The reported sell-off by government workers, even if it is true, only accounts for 1.4 percent and less than 1 percent, respectively, of sales in the two cities.

"The supply of second-hand houses increased in Shanghai in December, but not substantially. Also the price rise has been steady, with few signs of a sell-off," said Liu Yuan, a Shanghai-based senior manager at Centaline China Property Research.

Even if there has been a property sell-off by officials, the new supply would be limited compared with overall market demand, said Yin Bocheng, director of the real estate research center at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

But there might be more such sell-offs with reinforced anti-corruption efforts under China's new leadership, so it is hard to say how much impact these extra sales could have on the marketplace later, he said.