China’s new home prices in November suffered the worst month-on-month slump since February 2015, as tighter policies and a liquidity crunch in the property sector hurt demand, official data showed on Wednesday.
New home prices fell 0.3% month-on-month after easing 0.2% in October, according to Reuters’ calculations of data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
They rose 3.4% in November from a year earlier.
The property sector, a key driver of growth in the world’s second-largest economy, has slowed sharply in recent months, with sentiment shaken by tight regulations and a liquidity crisis that has engulfed some of the country’s largest and most indebted developers.
The data release follows a call last week by China’s top leaders to stabilise the country’s property market through supporting reasonable mortgage demand, adopting city-differentiated policies and promoting affordable housing construction.
“We expect further mild policy easing in 2022, including increasing mortgage quotas, allowing developers to issue bonds on China’s interbank market,” Mark Haefele, UBS Global Wealth Management chief investment officer, said.
“The slogan ‘housing is for living not for speculation was reiterated’, suggesting housing policy will stay tight in the medium to long term,” he added.
- Reuters, with George Russell
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