China interest in city homes at 10-year low
Interest in buying homes in Chinese cities dropped to the lowest level in almost a decade, reflecting concerns over personal incomes, state media reported Tuesday.
Only 13.3 percent of respondents said they planned to buy apartments in the next three months, the lowest level since 1999, the Shanghai Securities News reported, citing a survey by the People’s Bank of China.
The proportion was also down 1.8 percentage points from the previous quarter and 2.8 percentage points lower than a year earlier, according to the quarterly survey conducted in late August.
The central bank said it collected responses from 20,000 people in 50 cities, but the report gave no details of how the survey was conducted. No margin of error was provided.
The survey found in seven first-tier cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the south, less than 10 percent of respondents planned to buy new homes as enthusiasm on the real estate market ebbed, the report said.
China’s urban property price growth slowed for the seventh consecutive month in August to the lowest in 18 months as demand weakened, Dow Jones Newswires has reported, citing official figures.
The survey also indicated weakening consumer confidence, with only 24.5 of interviewees expecting their incomes to increase, down from 25.2 percent in May’s survey and 28.3 percent recorded a year earlier.
Meanwhile, inflation expectation dropped, with 42.8 percent of those surveyed expecting inflation to continue to rise in the fourth quarter, down 7.8 percentage points from the previous quarter.
Tags: central-bank, homes