70% of Chinese Cities Post Commercial Housing Price Declines in January

537

The latest official data points to year-on-year declines in new commercial housing prices for most of China’s major cities in January.

Data released over the weekend by China’s National Bureau of Statistics indicates that 7 out of 15 hot-spot cities posted on-month declines in new commercial housing sales prices in January, of between 0.1 – 0.4 percentage points.

Out of China’s four first-tier cities, only Beijing saw a rise in new commercial housing prices. Shanghai and Guangzhou both saw on-month declines of 0.4%.

Over 70% of the 70 large and medium-sized cities surveyed posted year-on-year declines in new commercial housing sales prices.

Liu Jianwei, senior statistician with the NBS, said to Xinhua that new commercial housing sales prices in first-tier cities had already shifted from year-on-year increases to year-on-year declines, while gains in second and third-tier cities were shrinking.