As residential home market cools, investment keeps on growing

More than half of the cities in the Yangtze River Delta region posted falling home prices during the first quarter. The slump was coupled with slowing transactions in the nation's top 10 cities, a report from a real estate consultancy showed.

The urban residential price index of the nation's 100 major cities, compiled by the China Index Academy - a research arm of the nation's largest property website Soufun - edged up 1.56 percent during the January-March period from the previous quarter but was 1.08 percentage points lower year-on-year.

A cooling residential property market also was reflected in new figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, which showed the value of home sales had dropped 7.7 percent year-on-year to 1.1 trillion yuan ($176.79 billion) in the first three months, contrasting with a surge of 69 percent a year ago.