China's home price decline narrows in July

BEIJING, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The decline in the prices of commercial residential homes in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities continued to narrow on a year-on-year basis in July, official data showed on Friday.

In the four first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, new home prices dropped 1.1 percent from a year earlier in July, with the pace of decline narrowing by 0.3 percentage points from June, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

Shanghai, the country's economic hub, recorded a 6.1 percent year-on-year increase in new home prices last month, the NBS said.

Second and third-tier cities saw new home prices fall by 2.8 percent and 4.2 percent year on year in July, with the declines narrowing by 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points, respectively.

On a monthly basis, NBS data shows that new home prices of the four first-tier cities dropped 0.2 percent from June, and second- and third-tier cities saw new home prices fall by 0.4 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.