China's property market seems destined for better days in 2013 (3)

Nationwide in November, prices of new homes picked up strength from a month earlier in 60 Chinese cities, with 17 urban areas experiencing an increase of more than 1 percent, according to the China Index Academy, which tracks 100 cities around the country. That compared with 56 cities showing gains in October.

Transactions of new residential properties in Shanghai, Beijing and eight other major cities, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose 7 percent month-on-month and 92 percent from a year earlier to 7.7 million square meters, according to a separate report from E-House China Research and the Development Institute in Shanghai.

Robust sales recorded since May did tend to damp hopes among some prospective homebuyers that prices might be on the wane. That caused some of the fence-sitters to decide to buy now before prices go up further, said Wu Xiaojun, an E-House researcher.

At the same time, an increasing number of real estate developers have begun to revive their appetites to expand land reserves.

Land sales in 10 major cities in November, for instance, hit a 16-month high of 66.3 billion yuan, with year-on-year decreases slowing down for the ninth straight month, E-House said.

"The country's land market is expected to recover at an accelerated pace in December as improving property sales help fill developers' pockets," Wu said. "Meanwhile, local governments are always inclined at year-end to put more parcels on the market, usually with better locations and higher values, to meet annual targets for land supply and raise revenue as well."

China Vanke Co, the country's largest publicly listed homebuilder, sold 11.78 million square meters of housing in the first 11 months of this year, an annual increase of 16 percent, according to a stock exchange filing. By value, sales climbed 9.8 percent to 127.1 billion yuan.

Evergrande Real Estate Group, another leading developer in the country, said in its filing that it sold 84.6 billion yuan of properties during the same period, meeting its yearly sales target of 80 billion yuan a month before schedule.

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