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Property prices decline in March

By Hu Yuanyuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-14 08:51

A real estate trade fair in Anhui province on April 11. [Wang Wen]

Property prices in China's 70 major cities fell 1.3 percent in March from a year earlier, the biggest drop since 2005, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement on its website yesterday.

The month-on-month figure, however, rose 0.2 percent, with property sales in key cities seeing a strong rebound.

Twenty-nine cities registered year-on-year increases in new residential building sales. Yinchuan in Ningxia autonomous region headed the list with a growth of 7.3 percent. But 41 cities, however, experienced a price fall, with Shenzhen seeing the biggest drop of 12.2 percent, said NBS.

"What we saw in Beijing is a rapid growing transaction volume along with a dip in property price, showing the market is on the track to recovery," said Carlby Xie, senior manager of research and consulting at Colliers International (Beijing).

Related readings:  Property prices continue upward march  Property prices firm up in first quarter  Housing prices may 'fall sharply'  Property price drops 1.2% in February

According to Xie, the residential market is likely to bottom out at the end of the year, while the overall property market, including retail, office and logistics sector, would bottom out by the middle of next year.

NBS statistics also show that investment on real estate development touched 488 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 4.1 percent on a yearly basis.

The growth rate is 3.1 percentage points higher than the first two months but is down 28.2 percentage points over the same period last year. Sales by floor area jumped 8.2 percent in March from a year earlier after dropping 0.3 percent in January and February.

At the recent spring real estate expo in Beijing, 437 apartments with an average unit price of 11,800 yuan per sq m were sold on the first day, compared to 120 units at an average price of 11,419 yuan per sq m in the autumn fair last November.

Grant Ji, director of Savills (Beijing), however, expressed doubts on whether the rally can be sustained over the long term.

"The current sales rebound mainly comes from small and medium-sized apartments with an affordable total price, showing the market is still driven by the self-use demand rather than improvement-oriented or investment-oriented demand," said Ji. "I would see the rebound only as a short rally."