China new home prices fall 0.1% April

China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on May 18 that prices of newly built commercial homes in 70 large and medium-sized cities continued to fall in April, extending a long property slump but at a slower monthly pace. Reuters calculations based on the official data showed new home prices slipped 0.1% from March, narrowing from a 0.2% drop a month earlier. The April reading marked the smallest month-on-month decline in a year, according to Reuters. On an annual basis, Reuters calculated that new home prices were down 3.5% in April, compared with a 3.4% year-on-year drop in March. ### How much did prices fall in April? April data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed a broad but uneven market, with city-level price indexes mostly still below the prior month. Reuters said its calculation from the official release put the nationwide month-on-month fall for new homes at 0.1%. That was the mildest decline since April 2025 and an improvement from March’s 0.2% drop. (publicnow.com) The same Reuters calculation showed annual new-home price declines deepened slightly to 3.5% in April from 3.4% in March. That means the monthly pace improved even as year-on-year comparisons remained weak, reflecting the depth of the downturn that has weighed on China’s housing market for several years. (publicnow.com) ### Which cities were still rising and which were still falling? National Bureau of Statistics city tables for April showed Shanghai rose 0.4% month on month, Hangzhou rose 0.4%, Nanjing rose 0.3%, and Shenzhen and Guangzhou each rose 0.1%. Beijing fell 0.2% from March, according to the same table. Reuters reported that prices in tier-one cities as a group rose 0.1% month on month, while tier-two cities fell 0.1% and tier-three cities fell 0.3%. (money.usnews.com) Reuters also reported that 49 of the 70 cities recorded monthly price declines in April, down from 54 in March. That count pointed to some easing in the breadth of price weakness, even though most cities were still posting monthly falls. ### What are officials and analysts saying about the market? (publicnow.com) Wang Zhonghua, chief statistician in the National Bureau of Statistics’ city department, said in an official interpretation carried by a state-distributed release that prices in first-tier cities rose from the previous month, while declines in second- and third-tier cities narrowed or were unchanged. That description matched the city-level pattern in the April tables. (money.usnews.com) Jeff Zhang, an analyst at Morningstar, told Reuters that “the property market has not yet bottomed out” and said sector indicators were likely to remain weak in coming months, although sales and prices in higher-tier cities could stabilize. Lynn Song, ING’s chief economist for Greater China, told Reuters that stabilization in prices would be a needed first step toward recovery because inventories remained high. (gmt8press.com) ### How does this fit with the broader property downturn? Reuters said China’s property sector once accounted for around a quarter of the economy and has been in a prolonged downturn that has hurt household wealth and domestic demand. Separate official data released on May 18 showed property investment fell 13.7% in the first four months of 2026 from a year earlier, steeper than the 11.2% decline in the first quarter, Reuters reported. (money.usnews.com) MarketWatch reported that home prices in the 70 cities were down 3.5% from a year earlier in the first four months of 2026, while property investment continued to contract. Those figures underscored that any improvement in monthly pricing has yet to translate into a broader turnaround in real-estate activity. (money.usnews.com) ### What should readers watch next? May 18 was the release date for the April 70-city home price report from the National Bureau of Statistics, and the next monthly update will show whether the slower decline was sustained. The bureau publishes those city-level housing price tables in its regular monthly data releases. Reuters and other market watchers are likely to compare the next month’s reading with April’s 0.1% fall and March’s 0.2% drop. (marketwatch.com) (publicnow.com)