China's resale home prices drop at faster pace in March, survey shows

BEIJING, April 1 (Reuters) - Average resale home prices across 100 Chinese cities fell at a sharper month-on-month pace in March, a private survey showed on Tuesday, signalling persistent challenges in the property sector despite modest gains in new home prices.

The average resale home price fell 0.59% from the prior month, versus a 0.42% drop in February, while new home prices in the same cities edged up 0.17% during the period, according to the survey by China Index Academy, one of the country's largest independent real estate research institutions.

Year-on-year, resale prices declined 7.29% in March, versus a 7.3% drop in February.

This trend continues even as China's real estate policy focuses on "stopping the decline". Premier Li Qiang's government work report from early March emphasized the need for sustained measures to stabilize the market.

Major cities, including tier-one cities, are likely to lead efforts to stop the decline, though disparities between larger and smaller markets may persist, China Index Academy said.

Sales by 100 major property developers slumped 10.6% year-on-year, reflecting continued weak demand, a separate survey by the same institute showed.

"China's residential property market may face ongoing challenges, given ... demographic shifts, high unsold inventory, and low housing affordability, despite some recent recoveries," Fitch Ratings said in a Saturday research note.

China has plans to boost lending for so-called "whitelist" projects to help qualified developers, and expand the scale of urban village renovation after a million units were renovated last year, the housing regulator said in March.

Under the "whitelist" mechanism launched in January 2024, local governments nominate projects, and state-owned as well as commercial banks are encouraged to provide lending. (Reporting by Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo; Editing by Himani Sarkar)