Prices of new homes in China's major cities fell at the quickest pace in nearly ten years in April on a monthly basis, while property investment and home sales also slid, adding to expectations that Beijing may take bolder action to address the real-estate slump.
Average new-home prices in 70 cities fell 0.58% in April from March, bigger than the 0.34% decline recorded the prior month, according to calculations done by The Wall Street Journal based on data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Friday. It was the fastest drop since November 2014, according to Wind, a local data provider.
The data showed that 64 cities reported home-price drops in April compared with the prior month, up from 57 in March.
Compared with a year earlier, average home prices fell 3.51% in April, also widening from the 2.65% drop recorded in March. Of the 70 cities, 63 reported declines in home prices from a year earlier, higher than 58 in March.
Property investment data was similarly downbeat, highlighting the challenge facing policy makers that have been stepping up efforts to revive the real-estate sector.
More data from the statistics bureau showed that property investment slid 9.8% from a year earlier in the first four months of the year, widening from the 9.5% drop recorded in the first quarter.
By value, sales of new homes plunged 31.1% in the January to April period from a year earlier, sharper than the 30.7% fall seen in the first quarter.
The sole improvement was in new construction starts by property developers, which narrowed their contraction, falling 24.6% from a year earlier in the first four months of the year compared with the 27.8% decline seen in the first three months.
Recent moves including reported plans by local governments to buy unsold properties for public housing have sparked some hope that policy makers are getting more serious about rescuing the property sector. Analysts have long called for bolder action, seeing previous measures as insufficient to revive demand for housing and address issues like excess housing inventory.
Chinese authorities are expected to announce more efforts to reverse the property downturn on Friday.
Housing and financial regulators will hold a press conference in the afternoon to introduce policies to ensure deliveries of homes, according to a government notice. The announcement will be closely watched to see if new measures will have a bigger impact on what has been a major drag on the world's second-largest economy.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
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