China Home Prices Rise In Fewer Cities As Cooling Measures Bite

(Bloomberg) -- China’s home prices rose in fewer cities in January as the government persisted with an almost two-year campaign to cool the market.

New-home prices, excluding government-subsidized housing, climbed in 52 of 70 cities tracked, compared with 57 in December, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday. Prices fell in 13 cities from the previous month and were unchanged in five.

Chinese officials trying to cool the housing market have rolled out tightening measures in at least 125 cities, according to a note last month from data provider Fang Holdings Ltd. Struggling to find a long-term solution to runaway prices, the government is experimenting with ramping up the rental housing supply, while fine-tuning the existing, ad-hoc controls on home sales in individual cities.

“Expecting housing policy to ease in 2018 would be unrealistic,” Alan Jin, a property analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia, said before the data was released. “The tightening measures implemented in 2017 are very likely to take their toll in 2018.”

New-home sales in 50 leading cities fell 18 percent in January from December, when developers accelerated sales to boost full-year numbers, according to private data collector China Real Estate Information Corp.

--With assistance from Winnie Zhu

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Emma Dong in Shanghai at edong10@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, John McCluskey, Paul Panckhurst

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Emma Dong