Home prices continue to stabilise on tough controls

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Xinhua, Beijing :
China’s once red-hot property market continued to show signs of cooling as home prices faltered or posted slower growth in major cities amid tough purchase restrictions, official data showed Friday.
On a yearly basis, of the 70 cities surveyed in July, the pace of new home price growth slowed in 15 major cities compared with the same month last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
On a month-on-month basis, new home prices fell or remained flat in 14 cities in July, up from 10 in June, according to the NBS data.
In Beijing, Nanjing and Shenzhen, new residential home prices fell in July from a month earlier, while Shanghai and Hangzhou saw prices unchanged.
Year on year, home prices in Beijing and Shanghai rose 8.9 percent and 7.3 percent in July, respectively.
This came after NBS data showed Monday that growth in property development investment further decelerated in the first seven months of the year.
The data adds to evidence that China’s property market boom is running out of steam as the government continues cooling measures to quash potential asset bubbles.
“The data show a notable stabilization in prices due to the government’s differentiated control policies,” said NBS statistician Liu Jianwei.
Rocketing housing prices, especially in major cities, had fueled concerns about asset bubbles. Since the end of 2016, dozens of local governments have passed or expanded their restrictions on house purchases and increased the minimum down payment required for a mortgage.
The market was also cooled by relatively tightened liquidity conditions in China as the government moved to contain leverage and risk in the financial system.
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