Property market growth slows

Fewer Chinese cities saw home prices rise and overall price growth slowed in September, indicating a slowdown in the recovery momentum of the property market, according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Thursday.

New home prices rose in 31 of the 70 major cities tracked by the NBS in September month-on-month, down from 36 in August.

Home prices in each of the 31 cities increased no more than 0.4 percent in September compared with the previous month, 0.2 percentage points lower than August.

Signs of property market recovery since April have raised concerns that many people may be seeing a dramatic rebound like the one in 2010, but the government's aggressive curbing policies make such a warmup unlikely.

Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated at a forum recently that efforts to control the property market have met with initial success, and the policies should not be changed due to the current instability in the market, Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

"Local governments may tighten their curbing policies in view of the central government's determined stance," said Zhang Xu, an analyst from the real estate brokerage Homlink.

"But future market recovery is still likely due to a strong demand for new homes," Zhang noted.

Actually, in some major cities like Beijing, both home prices and demand - especially for high-end apartments - increased markedly in the third quarter, according to a report released Tuesday by Savills Property Service Co, a global real estate consultancy.

The average sale price for high-end apartments in Beijing reached 43,510 yuan ($6,957) per square meter in the third quarter, up 10.8 percent compared with the previous quarter, the report said.

Because of limited supply and strong demand, those apartments may appreciate in price despite the curbing policies, Wang Qiong, director of research and consultancy at Savills (Beijing), said Tuesday.

Nationwide, the total areas of apartments whose construction began in the first nine months declined 8.6 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the NBS data.

"Developers were still hesitant to develop new homes partly because of the huge inventory accumulated since the government curbs," said Liu Yuan, a manager at property brokerage Centaline China.