Housing prices continued to climb in July, showing an average 6.7% year-over-year growth, up from 6.1% in June, Wall Street Journal reported, citing official data released Sunday. New home prices in first-tier cities showed as much as a 17.2% gain in July, according to National Bureau of Statistics’ figures. Until earlier this year, Beijing was tightening property controls to rein in house prices. But with growth fragile and the real-estate sector a key contributor to domestic demand, policymakers had taken a more relaxed approach. These most recent signs of rapidly rising house prices have sparked fresh concerns over a sharper policy correction to come.