Average housing prices of China's 70 major cities dropped 0.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the steepest annual decline since official records began in 2005, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile, housing prices dropped 0.2 percent compared to December, when for the first time home prices dropped over a year ago since the bureau started publishing the index.

China's housing sector has been in the doldrums since 2008 as sales stagnated and prices began to edge down. The weakness of the property sector, which represents about a quarter of the nation's investment, is one of the major factors leading to the nation's economic slowdown.

But the worsening economic outlook, coupled with increasing job risks and salary cuts, is now making prospective buyers think twice before buying new homes.

"The property sector will stay gloomy because it could take two or three years for the developers to clean up their inventories," said Wang Xiaoguang, an economist with the National Development and Reform Commission.

According to the statistics bureau, the total floor area of the nation's unsold houses is 90.69 million sq m, up 32.3 percent from a year earlier.

Vanke, the largest real estate developer, said its 2008 sales revenue dropped 8.6 percent from a year earlier, while the total floor area of the homes it sold dropped by 9.2 percent.

The total sales of the nation's real estate sector is expected to drop more than 21 percent in 2008, down from 600 million sq m in 2007, Qi Ji, vice-minister of housing and urban-rural development, said in a press conference in January.

The government has offered tax and credit incentives for developers and home buyers over the past months, trying to bolster investment and protect employment in the sector. But analysts say developers would have to offer further price cuts to lure home buyers.

Chen Xikang, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said housing prices are likely to drop by 8 percent to 10 percent in 2009, with big cities like Beijing and Shanghai set to see a 15-percent to 20-percent decline.

It has been reported that a stimulus plan for the real estate industry has been submitted to the State Council for approval and the government may enact the plan in March. That would give property developers more credit and development support.