Housing markets in China's first-tier cities showed signs of cooling in April, as tightening policies reined in prices, while prices in smaller neighboring cities increased, according to a report released on Sunday.
Although prices for new homes in the four first-tier cities in China - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province - kept rising in April, the gains were much smaller than in surrounding cities, said a report from the China Index Academy, a Beijing-based property research institution.
New home prices in the first-tier cities increased at rates between 0.92 percent and 2.03 percent from the previous month, with Shanghai seeing the slowest pace and Beijing seeing the fastest, said the report.
However, none of the four were among the top 10 cities for price gains on a month-on-month basis, the report showed. Tightening polices for home purchases in these cities had an impact as the number of transactions fell, it added.
Amid an overheating housing market, these cities tightened the rules for homebuyers, including tougher qualifications for purchasers and increased down-payment requirements.
Meanwhile, smaller cities such as Huizhou in Guangdong Province, which is close to both Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Kunshan in East China's Jiangsu Province, which is near Shanghai, and Langfang in North China's Hebei Province, which is close to Beijing, saw large new home price increases in April.
Huizhou saw the largest rise of 6.3 percent from a month earlier, while Kunshan and Langfang saw increases of 6.08 percent and 4.95 percent, respectively, according to the report.
Nationally, average new home prices among the 100 cities monitored by the academy rose by 1.45 percent in April from a month earlier and increased 8.98 percent from the previous year, the report said, adding that monthly increases are narrowing while yearly rises are expanding.
