China’s home sales continued to grow last month, signaling that tightening measures designed to stem a home price surge in some large cities have yet to slow the market’s upward momentum.
New home sales gained 63.5 percent to 793.7 billion yuan (US$121.5 billion) last month from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics released on Saturday. The increase followed a 71 percent surge in March.
Some Chinese cities unveiled tightening measures starting in mid-March to rein in rapid gains in house prices and a home-buying frenzy that followed government stimulus measures.
Among the cities to impose curbs were Shanghai and Shenzhen, where new home prices soared 25 percent and 62 percent in March from a year earlier respectively.
Suzhou, Nanjing and Langfang have also introduced tightening measures.
One indicator that the pace of increases might be slowing comes from moderating credit expansion last month, according to Bloomberg Intelligence economist Tom Orlik.
The nation’s banks extended new loans of 555.6 billion yuan last month, down from the median forecast of 800 billion yuan in a Bloomberg survey.
Increased credit is the “most critical driver” of the housing market rally so far, Hong Kong-based Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd analyst Alan Jin (金增祥) wrote in a note dated to Thursday last week.
Property development investment growth was 7.2 percent in the first four months of this year, 1 percentage point higher than the pace in the first quarter, according to Saturday’s data.
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