Home prices in China dropped for the 11th straight month in July, reflecting the woes of a property market suffering amid a developer debt crunch, an unexpectedly weak economy, a massive surplus of empty homes and a mortgage boycott by homebuyers fed up waiting for unfinished housing projects, reports the South China Morning Post.
China’s 70-city index of home prices dropped 0.1% compared with June and 1.7% year over year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday. New home prices dropped in 40 cities and secondary-market prices fell in 51 cities, an increase of two and three cities, respectively, compared with June, the data showed.
Lower-tier cities suffered more than their more populous counterparts. In fact, first-tier cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou—saw new-home prices increase by 3.1% and secondary-market prices increase by 0.9% year-on-year. In contrast, new and secondary-market prices declined by 0.5% and 2.5% in second-tier cities and by 3.2% and 3.9% in third-tier cities, respectively.