| BEIJING -- More Chinese cities reported lower or unchanged property prices in June, which suggested the government's cooling measures have begun to work, data showed on Monday.
Some 26 cities out of the statistical pool of 70 major cities saw new home prices declining or unchanged from a month earlier, compared to 20 cities in May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a report on its website.
Twelve cities including Tianjin, Nanjing and Chengdu saw prices fall month-on-month. Prices in Beijing, Hangzhou and 12 other cities remained unchanged.
While the rest of the cities reported higher prices, 24 of them said that price growth slowed in June.
Housing prices have generally stabilized, but analysts have warned that the government's regulatory measures should remain in place, as some cities are still facing price hikes and other problems as they continue to build more affordable housing units.
The government has adopted various measures to cool the property market and curb rising prices, including restricting residents in major cities from buying second or third homes, requiring higher down payments for mortgages and instituting new property taxes in the cities of Chongqing and Shanghai.
Yang Hongxu, an analyst with the Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institute, said sales volumes dropped remarkably from a year ago. He described June's market as "very sluggish."
According to data compiled by Homelink, a Beijing-based real estate agency, the number of unsold new homes in the city reached 108,000 units by July 14. Zhang Yue, the agency's chief analyst, said it will take 15 months to sell the unsold homes, taking the market's recent performance into account.
Housing prices have generally stabilized, but analysts have warned that the government's regulatory measures should remain in place, as some cities are still facing price hikes and other problems as they continue to build more affordable housing units.
However, while the policies have worked to cool down prices, investment is still at an all-time high.
According to data released by the NBS last Wednesday, real estate investment grew by one-third to reach 2.63 trillion yuan during the first six months of the year.
Despite three interest rate hikes this year, developers have continued to invest in the real estate market, secured by the handsome profits they have raked in from previous sales.
Facing harsh restrictive purchase policies in larger cities, developers have shifted their focus to the country's second- and third-tier cities.
Non-first-tier cities saw their prices increase the most last month, with growth rates between 1.78 percent and 2.72 percent, according to NBS data.
Prices in those cities are likely to rise even more, as they have been pushed up by local demand and speculative purchases by investors from other areas, said Zhang Yuan, an analyst with Centraline Property, another Beijing-based real estate agency.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development will impose restrictive purchase policies on non-first-tier cities in order to prevent overinvestment, the Securities Daily newspaper reported on Monday.
To curb the market, the Chinese government has announced that it will build 36 million affordable housing units between 2011 and 2015.
During a meeting of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, which was held last Tuesday, government officials agreed that they will strive to ensure that the construction of the planned 10 million housing units will commence before the end of November this year.
Construction on more than 5 million of the units had already started as of June. The government expects that the construction of nearly 4 million units will be completed within the year, according to a statement issued after the meeting.
The State Council said local governments must allocate more government funding for the construction and encourage banks in their jurisdictions to provide more loans for affordable housing projects in order to meet the government's construction deadline.
It may take a long time before the affordable housing units are ready for sale, which has created uncertainty in consumer expectations, analysts have said.
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