Mainland homebuyers appear to have shrugged off the central government's cooling measures in the property sector, with 68 out of 70 cities seeing new-home prices rise last month from a year earlier.
New-home prices in Beijing recorded a year-on-year 6.8 per cent increase last month, while Shanghai edged up 1.5 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Prices in Shenzhen gained 3.1 per cent while Guangzhou increased 0.1 per cent.
Despite renewed efforts to cool the overheated market, Haikou recorded the strongest growth of 21.5 per cent while 10 smaller cites gained more than 10 per cent, according to the bureau, which used a new method of calculating prices.
However, transaction prices in the primary markets of Quanzhou, Fujian province, and Nanchong, Sichuan province, fell 0.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively.
But analysts and property consultants now believe the market will have a correction in coming months.
'We will probably see the market feeling the pinch in the next several months,' said Eric Wong Chun-yu, co-head of Asian property research at Swiss investment bank UBS.
Wong said Beijing's secondary home prices have slipped 1.7 per cent as of December from their peak in April last year.