China's New Home Prices Stalled In March

New home prices on the mainland stalled for a second straight month in March, official data showed on Friday.

Average new home prices in China's 70 major cities remained unchanged month-on-month in March, the same as in February, according to calculations based on data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

On a year-on-year basis, new home prices rose 1.5 percent, their slowest pace since November 2015 and down from a 2.0 percent rise in February.

More than 60 cities have eased curbs on home purchases to support the ailing property market this year, after Beijing's campaign to reduce developers' debt levels cooled the sector in the second half of 2021.

After some signs of improvement in January, however, surging cases of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of Covid-19 and strict lockdowns to stop its spread have again slowed demand in many cities.

In Shanghai, transactions by value of newly built homes in March slumped 27 percent from a month earlier to 36.2 billion yuan, the financial magazine Yicai reported. (Reuters)