China's new home prices rose for the first time since September on a monthly basis. That was driven by some attempts to soften the blow from tight regulatory restrictions on the sector supporting buyer sentiment, especially in big cities.
Citing Reuters (21/2), the average new home price in China's 70 major cities rose 0.1% from the previous month in January. This was an improvement from the 0.2% decline in December.
Meanwhile, the number of cities reporting price increases rose to 28 from 15 in December, mainly driven by the larger tier one and second cities.
"In January, new housing prices in first-tier cities went from a 0.1% monthly decline in December to a 0.6% increase, with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen increasing by 1.0% each, 0.6%, 0.5% and 0.5%," NBS said in a statement.
The biggest gain among the four cities was seen in Guangzhou, which swung from a 0.6% decline. Meanwhile, Shenzhen fell 0.1% in December.
As is well known, China's property market has slowed due to Beijing's insistence on cutting leverage in the sector amid defaults on heavily indebted players such as China Evergrande Group.
To ease the pain for developers, authorities have taken many actions since late 2021, including giving real estate companies easier access to funds from escrow accounts.
Although easing measures helped, new home prices rose at the slowest pace of 2.3% since December 2015 from a year earlier. Narrowing from the 2.6% growth recorded in December.
The central government is expected to roll out more measures to support buyer sentiment, which has weakened sharply due to the liquidity crisis faced by developers.
Some cities that aren't restricted by purchase-restriction regulations are starting to relax down-payment rules for home purchases in a bid to spark buyer interest.
