Prices rise in more cities nationwide in April than in March
More cities in April saw a rebound in housing prices, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Monday, indicating that the country's housing market is showing signs of warming-up.
The rebound was mainly triggered by the government's recent monetary easing and supporting policies for the sector, analysts said Monday.
Among the 70 major cities monitored by the NBS, 18 have reported a month-on-month rise in new housing prices in April, six more than that in March, according to NBS data.
Prices of secondhand housing also saw a rebound in April.
A total of 28 cities saw a month-on-month rise in secondhand housing prices in April compared to 12 cities in March.
But the rebound mostly took place in the country's first-tier cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, as well as some second-tier cities, according to a post on the NBS' website on Monday, citing Liu Jianwei, a senior NBS statistician.
Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province saw the largest price increase in April, with prices of new housing having risen 1.8 percent from March and prices of secondhand homes having increased by 2.4 percent over March.
Shenzhen was also the only city to see year-on-year growth in both new and secondhand housing prices in April.
Xue Jianxiong, an analyst at the China Real Estate Information Corp, told the Global Times on Monday that Shenzhen's services industry and scientific innovation saw rapid growth in the past 10 years, which has augmented people's income and boosted the city's real estate industry.
The housing price rebound comes at a time when the government has stepped up efforts to back the real estate market amid the downward pressure.
The People's Bank of China, the central bank, announced on March 30 it would lower the required down payment for second-home purchases, in efforts to prop up the housing market.
The central bank has also cut the benchmark interest rates and the reserve requirement ratio for banks twice in 2015, which could also help to spur the market, experts said.
Xue said that these policies have lowered the price of homes by around 10 percent, which has helped boost the housing market.
Wang Ruizhe, a research fellow at the Capital Securities, told the Global Times on Monday that housing prices in China's first-tier cities might continue to rise in the near future.
But the NBS report also pointed out that China's second-tier and third-tier cities are still facing a flat housing market, with their new housing prices slumping 0.1 and 0.3 percent, respectively, on a monthly basis in April.
"The supply of land is relatively adequate in small cities. In general, the housing demand falls short of supply in second-tier and third-tier cities," said Xue.
