THE value of new home purchases in China rose at a slower pace in the first four months of the year as home seekers' anxiety started to ease following a hectic March.
Sales of new residential properties, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 65.2 percent from a year earlier to 1.69 trillion yuan (US$273 billion) between January and April, the National Bureau of Statistics said. That compared to the 69 percent annual growth registered in the first quarter.
By volume, new home purchases rose 41 percent to 268 million square meters during the four months, similar to the pace in the January-March period.
"As governments around the country released their local guidelines in response to a central government announcement to implement new tightening measures, panic buying and selling among home seekers came to an end with markets all seeing signs of stabilizing," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co.
Investment in housing projects, meanwhile, rose 21 percent year on year to 1.3 trillion yuan in the first four months, the bureau said.