Home prices fall for fifth straight month

Chinese home prices fell in February from January for a fifth consecutive month and are expected to continue heading south in coming months, underlining the success of Beijing's long campaign to cool property market speculation. Average new home prices across China fell 0.1 per cent last month, versus a drop of 0.2 per cent in January, according to Reuters' weighted home price index based on data announced by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday. The NBS said new home prices fell in 45 of the 70 major cities it monitors and remained flat in 22, but rose in the cities of Jinan, Xining and Baotou. In January, they stopped rising in all 70 cities from a month earlier. In year-on-year terms, home price declines spread to 27 cities in February from 14 in January. As a result, they remained unchanged on average last month for the first time since China's property tightening campaign started in late 2009. That compared with an annual rise of 0.5 per cent in January.