April sales adding fuel to fears of property bubble

Home buyers examine a property model in Zhuozhou, Hebei province. China's home sales fell 18 percent in April. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's home sales fell 18 percent in April amid tighter credit, adding to signs of a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

The value of homes sold declined to 418 billion yuan ($67 billion) from 509 billion yuan in March, according to National Statistics Bureau data for the first four months of the year. The value of total sales from January to April fell 9.9 percent to 1.53 trillion yuan from a year earlier, the data showed.

China's broadest measure of new credit fell last month as authorities extended their campaign to tame a debt boom. New-home sales in 54 cities during the May 1-3 Labor Day holiday dropped 47 percent from a year earlier to 236,000 square meters, a four-year low, according to the Centaline Group real-estate agency.

Slowing property data "are testing the tolerance of the government on the economic slowdown," said Dai Fang, a Shanghai-based property analyst at Zheshang Securities Co.

"Local government easing measures are meaningless for a recovery in the market. The key issue is when the credit will be loosened."

At least six smaller Chinese cities have been relaxing local curbs on speculative and investment-driven home buying since the end of April. The northern city of Zhengzhou in Henan province issued draft rules to promote home purchases by low and middle-income households, according to a statement posted on the government's website on May 7.

China's property bubble is a "key risk" to watch in 2014, while the impact of monetary tightening and regulatory scrutiny are compounding the risks of a property bubble, Barclays Plc analysts, led by Chang Jian, wrote in a May 9 report.

Investment in homes, office buildings, malls and other types of real estate climbed 16 percent to 2.23 trillion yuan in the first four months, according to the statistics bureau.