Fewer cities saw house prices rise in January compared to December as austerity measures coupled with tightened credit continued to ease buyer sentiment.
Excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, prices of new residential properties climbed in 62 cities around the country, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, which tracks both new and existing housing prices in 70 major cities. That compared to 65 cities in December.
In the existing home market, 48 cities registered price increases from a month earlier, a decrease of 16 from December.
"Fewer cities recorded month-on-month price increases in January while for new homes the average growth rate also moderated from 0.51 percent in December to 0.49 percent last month," said Liu Jianwei, a senior statistician at the bureau. "Further tightened property curbs introduced by some city governments late last year as well as tightened credit at commercial banks helped cool sentiment."
Some commercial banks in China have tightened lending to the property sector after they were hit by bouts of severe liquidity crunch last year, Xinhua news agency reported.
Industrial Bank ordered its local branches to suspend loans to some sectors till the end of March, including some property development projects, as well as steel, cement, construction and other property-related sectors, according to the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday.
In January, 25 cities registered smaller monthly gains in new home prices, according to the bureau. Of the four first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen all saw their monthly new home price growth narrow by 0.1 percentage points compared with December while the monthly growth rate in Guangzhou remained unchanged.
On an annual basis, 69 cities, led by Shanghai's 20.9 percent gain, recorded new home price rises, unchanged from December. Among them, 37 cities, including the first-tier cities, saw smaller yearly gains, an increase of eight from December.
A report by the China Index Academy also suggested a cooling off in the country's housing market after a robust 2013.
The average price of new homes in 100 cities monitored by the academy rose 0.63 percent month on month to 10,901 yuan (US$1,799) per square meter in January, moderating from a 0.7 percent gain in December.
