Even as China’s economy grew faster in December than before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the country’s property market struck a more downbeat tone.
While new home prices across the country’s biggest cities rose 3.7 per cent last month compared with a year earlier, the pace of growth was the slowest since early 2016 and prices were up only marginally from November.
The data were a signal of the success of new government measures designed to cool the market and curtail developers. As with asset prices around the world during the pandemic, low interest rates combined with higher savings have stoked concerns that the Chinese property market was overheating.