Property market sees April slowdown

China's property development and sales saw a slower pace of growth in April, official data showed Tuesday, with the faltering real estate sector adding to the slowdown in the economy.

Investment in property development totaled 2.23 trillion yuan ($362 billion) in the January to April period, up 16.4 percent from a year earlier but 0.4 percentage points lower than growth in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, investment in residential building construction, which accounted for 68.5 percent of total property investment in the first four months, fell by 0.2 percentage points compared to the first quarter.

Also, the real estate climate index, a gauge of developers' confidence, fell to 95.79 in April, down 0.61 points from March, the NBS said.

A few hours after the NBS data was published, the central bank released a statement saying that it had asked commercial banks to speed up the granting of home loans to first-time buyers at reasonable rates, underpinning its efforts to support the faltering property market as the economy cools.

"Support for the housing market is already starting to come," Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The recent tightening of mortgage loans is considered one of the reasons for the flagging property market this year, with banks having reportedly raised home loan rates for first-time buyers and delayed approval of loans because of tighter liquidity.

By the end of April, the amount of unsold property in 35 major cities hit a record high of 249 million square meters, according to Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, indicating sluggish home sales.

Another key indicator, the year-on-year growth of urban fixed-assets investment (FAI), fell 0.3 percentage points in the first four months from the first quarter, the NBS said.

The property downturn is one of the major factors behind the moderation in FAI growth, Lu Ting, chief China economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told the Global Times in a research note on Tuesday.

"China's April activity data also came in slightly weaker than market expectations," Lu wrote.

Industrial production and retail sales, key indicators for manufacturing activity and consumption, saw slower expansion in April from March, down 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points respectively, according to the NBS.

"On the surface, the data is pretty bad, worse than the market expected. However, the reality is less negative than the headline numbers suggest," said Kowalczyk of Credit Agricole.

If adjusted for inflation, retail sales actually grew by 10.9 percent in April, slightly up from March's 10.8 percent growth.

This indicates slightly stronger consumption, and China has also seen an acceleration of passenger car sales and job creation, he said.

It is too early to see the results of the fine-tuning measures announced earlier this year, he noted. "I think by the second half of this year, the economy should be picking up," Kowalczyk said, adding that the measures already taken will be enough to achieve the government's growth target of 7.5 percent.

These measures include investment in railway construction; a tax cut for small businesses; a guided depreciation of the yuan against the US dollar to help exporters; stabilizing interbank rates at a lower level rather than cutting deposit rates; a targeted rather than a broad-based reserve requirement ratio cut; and fiscal spending on infrastructure and social housing projects.

The economy could pick up in the second half of this year, amid the move from a manufacturing-driven economic model to one based on consumption, Zhang Yingjie, deputy general manager of the R&D Department at China Chengxin International Credit Rating, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

President Xi Jinping said Saturday that the country should adapt to new norms in its economic growth and be cool-minded amid the slowdown, Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

Premier Li Keqiang said at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference in April that China will not use strong stimulus measures simply because of temporary economic fluctuations.