Home prices rise at slowest in six months
Home prices on the mainland rose at their slowest pace in six months in July as the government continued with tough measures to tighten lending and increase land supply.
Prices in 70 major cities rose 10.3 per cent year on year last month, the statistics bureau's newspaper, China Information News, reported yesterday. The total value of transactions fell 19.3 per cent from a year earlier.
Home prices remained unchanged from the previous month after a 0.1 per cent decline in June that was the first fall in 16 months, the report said.
Lina Wong, managing director of Colliers International's east and southwest China division, said prices in some major cities fell faster than nationwide data showed, with Shanghai seeing a 15 to 20 per cent fall in some prime locations. 'As time goes on, more developers will be under pressure to cut prices,' she said.
According to a Knight Frank research report published yesterday, between the end of April and the end of June, the numbers of unsold homes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen rose 8 per cent, 13 per cent, 24 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively. The average daily sales of new homes in each city in May and June plunged 70 per cent, 65 per cent, 20 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively, compared with April.
In July, monthly sales of new homes in Beijing rebounded about 30 per cent, and by 4 per cent in Shanghai compared with the previous month, while sales in Guangzhou and Shenzhen shrank by about 10 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively.
Xavier Wong, who heads China research at property consultants Knight Frank, did not expect to see a drastic price drop in the four major cities in the second half of the year as supply remained limited. The average home price in Shanghai was likely to drop a further 15 per cent. Beijing will see a decline of less than 10 per cent, with Guangzhou and Shenzhen prices falling 10 per cent, Wong estimated.
