Growth in New Home Prices Continues to Cool

New home prices in 100 Chinese cities rose 5.09% year-on-year in December, down 0.13 percentage points from November, according to a report Thursday by private research agency China Index Academy.

The average price of new home in the 100 cities rose to 14,678 yuan ($2138) per square meter last month.

“In the future, we expect that stabilizing home prices continues to be the key of property policies in different local markets,” the December report said. “Home prices in some major cities will continue to adjust, there will be less upward forces to push home prices in third- or fourth-tier cities, and home prices in more cities will cool down.”

Due to tightened regulations and a cooling market, the sales achieved by major market developers grew 33% in 2018, down from 54% in 2017, according to research by Hong Kong-based China Merchants Securities International Co. Ltd. on Wednesday. As policies shifted, property sales have accelerated since November, with sales up 37% year-on-year in December.

In November, China Index Academy once again started publishing its monthly report on the home price data after a roughly two-year hiatus. Reuters reported the suspension in January 2017. The company never specified the reason.

New home prices in the 100 cities reached 14,641 yuan per square meter in November, according to the agency, up 13.2% from November 2016, the last report before the suspension. The growth rate was 9 percentage points lower than the growth rate between 2016 and 2014, when new home prices grew by 22.2%, according to Caixin calculations based on agency data.

China Index Academy didn’t reply to Caixin’s request for comment on why it had resumed publishing the data.

The resumption came amid China’s cooling property market and a central government call to continue reining in real estate speculation this year.

Contact reporter Liu Jiefei (jiefeiliu@caixin.com)