New home sales in China rose by a slower pace in the first five months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement yesterday.
New homes worth 3.18 trillion yuan (US$483 billion), excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, were sold between January and May, a year-on-year jump of 53.4 percent. However, that was slower than the 61.4 percent annual surge in the first four months.
A total of 428.7 million square meters were sold in the five-month period, up 34.2 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the bureau. But the figure also decelerated from a 38.8 percent year-on-year rise in the January-April period.
“The property market began to regain some rationality in May though the growth rate in general still remained high,” said Lu Wenxi, a senior manager of research at Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co. “The rather insignificant fall in the sales growth in the first five months reflected a cooling in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen where strict tightening measures have been implemented as well as continuing robust buying sentiment in most second-tier cities.”
