China's home prices continue to rise

BEIJING - Prices of both new and existing homes continued to rise in most Chinese cities in June, according to official data released on Thursday.

Of a statistical pool of 70 major Chinese cities, 63 saw month-on-month home price rises. However, the number was down from 65 cities that reported higher prices in May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement on its website.

Commodity houses in Changsha, Central China's Hunan province, July 17, 2013. [Photo/Xinhua]

According to the NBS, 55 cities reported month-on-month price gains in existing homes in June compared to the previous month. The figure also dropped from 64 cities that saw price rises in May, the data showed.

The data was in line with market expectations that the trend of price rises would be sustained even though the amount of increases would be tempered.

Liu Jianwei, a senior statistician with the NBS, said that around half the cities saw narrower new home price increases in June from a month ago. Price gains narrowed by 0.5 and 0.2 percentage points in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, respectively.

The tempered tone in analyzing the June data met criticism online, with many complaining home prices had still increased across a broad range and the current prices remained unaffordable for common people.

In first-tier cities, home prices all witnessed sharp rises last month both on a monthly and yearly basis.

The NBS data covered the nation's large and medium-sized cities, including megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai, provincial capitals, and other municipal cities.

Compared to May, only five cities, including Guiyang and Urumqi, saw new home price declines last month. Eight cities, including Harbin and Lanzhou, reported price drops in existing homes. However, the price declines were unanimously limited, the data showed.

On a year-on-year basis, new home prices rose in all cities except Wenzhou last month, while only the cities of Wenzhou and Haikou reported price declines of existing homes.