China's property market shows stronger signs of recovery

BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday released its latest home price data, indicating that the property market of the world's second-largest economy is on stronger footing for recovery, supported by a raft of policy measures.

In the country's 70 large and medium-sized cities, the decline in the prices of commercial residential homes narrowed on a year-on-year basis in November, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

The 70 cities are categorized into three tiers within the country, and each tier reported a narrowed decline last month.

In the four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- new home prices dropped 4.3 percent year on year, a decline narrowing 0.3 percentage points from October.

Notably, Shanghai, China's economic hub, saw a 5 percent increase in new home prices last month, the NBS said.

Second-hand home prices in the first-tier cities went down 8 percent last month, 1.6 percentage points narrower than the decline in October.

For the 31 second-tier and 35 third-tier cities across the country, data also showed narrower drops in both new and second-hand home prices in November, according to the NBS.

On a month-on-month basis, new home prices in the four first-tier cities remained flat in November, compared with a 0.2 percent decline in the previous month. Second-hand home prices in these cities rose by 0.4 percent.

Out of the 70 cities nationwide, 17 reported month-on-month increases in new home prices in November, up from just seven cities in October.

At a key meeting in late September, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee said that efforts must be made to "stabilize the property market and reverse its downturn."

Since then, various departments have taken steps to adjust the policy of housing purchase restrictions, such as reducing interest rates on existing mortgage loans, while promptly improving land, fiscal, tax and financial policies.

"These policy measures have proven to be very effective as they help unleash housing demand and reduce home purchase costs," said NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui at a press conference on Monday.

China's property market began to see positive changes in October, with transaction activities becoming much busier in November, Fu said. "With improved market expectations, the market is sustaining a sound recovery from the previous downturn."

During the annual Central Economic Work Conference held last week to outline priorities for the Chinese economy in 2025, Chinese leaders decided that efforts should be continuously ratcheted up to further reverse the downturn of and stabilize the real estate market, reasonably control the supply of newly added real estate land, and promote the establishment of a new model for real estate development.