Initial Home Price Data From July: Price Declines Still Accelerating

Initial data from private sources is good for reading trends, before we get the government data mid-month. Here's a list of home prices in 100 cities. The China Index Academy has released its 100-city data. The results: price declines are accelerating. Prices fell an average of 0.8% in July, up from a 0.5% average decline in June. The June number was slightly better than government numbers. The report is here.

The first list is 100 cities, month on month price changes, followed by avg and median price per sqm. Below are the 10 largest cities broken out along with existing home price changes.

All of the 10 largest cities saw new home prices decline in July; only Chongqing saw an increase in existing home prices.

Quanzhuo in Fujian province led the 100 cities with a 1.66% increase in new home prices, followed by Qinhuangdao (a city with excess inventory) and Shijiazhuang, the latter two both in Hebei province. In total, 24 out of 100 cities saw price increases.

At the other end, Jilin in Jilin province and Heze in Shandong province led the losers with losses of more than 3% mom.

Several of the cities in Zhejiang province, hoem to several housing bubbles, had some of the smallest losses. Hangzhou was down 1.5%, but Ningbo and Wenzhuo both saw price increases. Maybe this is a bump due to this area being the home province of many housing speculators and buying restrictions being eased. And could the market in Wenzhou be turning after nearly 3 years of continual losses? One month isn't a trend, but the gain, if it shows up in the official numbers later this month, will break a 30+ month chain of losses.