New rules fail to quench home fever

Gu said only by adding supply could the housing market reach a healthy balance in supply and demand and further cool home price fever.

But senior NBS official Liu Jianwei said that the regulations are starting to hit and the rising trend in local property markets has lost momentum.

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"More cities saw price growth ease in December, because a raft of government efforts to stabilize market expectation started to take effect, which included more control measures and increased supplies of affordable housing," said Liu.

Following earlier tightening moves by first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, quite a few second-tier cities also announced curbs as soaring housing markets put their 2013 price-rise targets even further beyond reach at the end of last year.

Monthly price gains in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen retreated by 0.1 percentage point, 0.1 percentage point, 0.1 percentage point and 0.4 percentage point, respectively, from those seen a month earlier.

Chen Sheng, vice-president of the China Real Estate Data Academy, agrees with the trend, saying this fundamental change, although still yet to see a real effect, will gradually show results this year.

As the home market is going in different directions, the central government is happy to see more and more local governments using tailor-made local policies to deal with their own issues.

"This is much better than the former central government's unified policies, which may not quite fit into the local situation," said Chen.

Chen said apart from the four first-tier cities that saw an average home price surge of more than 20 percent in 2013, quite a few third-tier and fourth-tier cities saw their home prices declining, including Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, Erdos, in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and Yingkou in Liaoning province.  

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