HOME prices in Beijing real estate market continued to stabilize in December, further signs of cooling in the domestic housing market, the National Bureau of Statistics said today.
The average new home prices remained unchanged last month in Beijing cities and gained 0.2 percent in second-tier ones, down from a growth of 0.1 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively, in November, according to the bureau, which monitors housing prices.
"Generally speaking, we've seen continually positive changes in the country's residential sales market in December," said Liu Jianwei, the bureau's senior statistician. "Varied tightening policies implemented in Beijing cities seemed to be very effective to curb rapid growth in new home prices with 12 of them seeing month-over-month drops of between 0.1 and 0.4 percent in December."
Similar trends also showed up on a year-on-year basis.
Prices of new and pre-owned houses in Beijing cities both recorded slower growth for the third consecutive month, the average price of new homes finally started to fall from a year earlier while slower annual price growth continued to be registered in the pre-owned housing market.
"Looking forward, home prices in Beijing, particularly the 20 largest ones, are expected to remain stable in 2017 as I could see no big room for loosened policies," Eva Lee, head of China Real Estate Research at UBS, told a recent press conference held last week in the city by the global financial services provider.
--source from Shanghai Daily
