Property prices continue to soar in 65 cities  

Beijing（CNS）-- China's overheated property market remains buoyant for four consecutive months as home prices in 65 large and medium-sized cities maintained upward trends in May, according to reports on Tuesday.

First-tier cities like Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai still saw the fastest growth in price hikes.

Home prices in 65 major Chinese cities in May rose from a month earlier, with Guilin seeing the biggest rise at 2.9 percent, followed by Shanghai at 1.7 percent, Beijing at 1.6 percent and Guangzhou at 1.5 percent, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday.

Prices of new homes rose in 69 cities in May, with Guangzhou rising 15.5 percent from a year earlier, and Beijing and Shanghai rising 15.2 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively.

Second-hand house prices also rose in 67 of 70 cities in May from a year earlier.

Chinese property prices started to rebound in the second half of 2012, shored up by the country's pro-growth policies, and since then home prices have been on an upswing.

However, some experts say that there are new signs of home price rises losing momentum in May, as existing government steps to cool the property market take hold.

The data show that new home prices in 34 cities saw slower month-on-month rises compared with April. New houses in Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou and Chengdu saw price rises narrow by at least 0.6 percentage points.

Liu Jianwei, a senior statistician at NBS, attributed the sharp rises partly to the low base last year.

"There are still many cities seeing home prices rising, and the property tightening campaign should continue to focus on implementation," said Liu.