Gains likely to continue for months to come: experts
China's home price growth quickened in August, which experts said on Monday was mainly because many people rushed to buy apartments before implementation of curbs on home purchases in some cities.
In August, new home prices climbed month-on-month in 64 of the 70 large and medium-sized cities tracked by the government, compared with 51 in July, figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
Four cities recorded monthly declines in new home prices, down from 16 in July, and prices were flat in two, down from three in the previous month.
On a year-on-year basis, 62 cities saw new home prices gain in August, compared with 58 in July.
Prices of new and secondhand apartments in first-, second- and third-tier cities rose at a quicker pace in August, with price gains accelerating in about half of the cities compared with July, Liu Jianwei, senior statistician at the NBS, wrote in a statement on Monday.
Average new home prices in the 70 cities increased 9.2 percent year-on-year in August, up from July's 7.9 percent gain, according to Reuters calculations based on the NBS data.
Experts generally attributed the price gains to booming sales in some first- and second-tier cities, with buyers eager to complete transactions before new housing curbs take effect.
"Given the expectations for policy changes, people rushed to 'catch the last bus' before authorities announce stricter rules, which is often a major reason behind a sudden surge in home prices," Deng Yongcheng, an associate professor specializing in real estate marketing at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Monday.
Jiang Yining, an analyst from Capital Securities, noted that the recent curbs announced by some second-tier cities are not very strict because they only prevent non-permanent residents from buying homes.
On August 31, Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, and Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, announced restrictions on home purchases. Xiamen is also the city that recorded the biggest price surge in August, up 43.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the NBS.
Prices in these cities are still rising, and that is expected to continue until the end of this year or even the beginning of next year, Jiang told the Global Times on Monday.
"After all, local governments don't want to see home prices go down, as land revenues are directly linked to their fiscal revenues," Deng noted, citing the emergence of a number of new "land kings" in recent months.
For instance, Shanghai sold a site for about 100,000 yuan ($14,990) per square meter in August, the most expensive in China.
