Housing Prices Continued to Decline in Mid-tier Cities across China in December

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Second and third-tier cities across China continued to see declines in commercial housing prices in the month of December, according to the latest official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

NBS data released on 16 January indicates that housing sales prices in second and third-tier cities saw year-on-year (YoY) declines in December, although first-tier cities posted gains.

For China’s first-tier cities, new commercial housing sale prices posted a YoY rise of 2.5%, for an increase commensurate with the gain posted in November.

Pre-owned housing sale prices rose 0.6% YoY, for a decline of 0.6 percentage points compared to the increase in November.

For second-tier cities, new commercial housing sales prices declined 1.1% YoY in December, narrowing by 0.1 percentage points compared to the decline for the previous month.

Pre-owned housing sales prices fell 3.2% YoY, maintaining the same pace of decline compared to the previous month.

In China’s third-tier cities, new commercial housing sales prices fell 3.9% YoY, while pre-owned housing sales prices posted a decline of 4.8%. Both these declines were commensurate with the prints for November.

Our of 70 large and medium-sized cities monitored by NBS, new commercial housing sales prices saw on-month declines in 55 cities, while only four saw increases.

Pre-owned housing sales prices declined in on-month terms in 63 cities, while only one city saw an increase.