Wuxi has surpassed Suzhou to make the top three in a real estate price index amongst 100 Chinese cities in May, following Xiamen and Hefei, data from the China Index Academy showed on June 1, Jsnews.jschina.com.cn reported.

Of 100 large and medium-sized cities surveyed in May, 74 witnessed property price increases month-on-month, up from 71 in April, while 24 cities reported month-on-month price declines and two cities remained flat. In addition, 29 cities saw property prices surge more than 1 percent month-on-month, up from 28 cities in April.

The average price for new apartments in the 100 ranked cities is 11,662 yuan ($1,776) per square meter, up 1.7 percent month-on-month and a gain of 0.25 percentage points from the previous month.

The top 10 cities with the highest price increase in May are all second-tier cities. Xiamen in East China’s Fujian province led the list with a new home price increase of 5.58 percent on a monthly basis. Hefei of East China’s Anhui province came in second with an increase of 5.76 percent month-on-month. Wuxi in Jiangsu province ranked third with a month-on-month growth of 4.06 percent, followed by Nanjing rising 3.93 percent month-on-month.

Other cities that saw new home prices increase more than 3 percent on a monthly basis are: Langfang in Hebei province, Dongguan and Zhongshan in Guangdong province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, and Nanchang in Jiangxi province.

The fast increase of housing and land prices in second-tier cities are more or less influenced by the housing prices in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Experts said that new house prices started to tick up last December after 15 consecutive months of decline year-on-year, and they accelerated this January, mainly boosted by government support measures such as interest rate cuts and lower down payment requirements. New house prices are expected to see further increases in the near future following the trend in recent months.