(Yicai Global) March 16 -- The scale of Covid-19 impacts is starting to show in China's property market as 24 out of 70 selected cities reported zero transactions in February.

Central China's Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, was obviously one of the poorly performing markets but not all of them were located in the same Hubei province, as data that the National Bureau Statistics released today shows.

In the first two months of this year, China's total home sales area fell nearly 40 percent from a year ago to 84.75 million square meters and the value dropped by almost 36 percent to CNY820.3 billion (USD117.1 billion), the NBS added.

Last month, new home prices in China's four largest cities, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, were flat from a previous month, compared with a 0.4 percent climb in January. Existing home prices in the four municipalities rose by 0.4 percent, which was 0.3 percentage point less than in the period between January and December.

Among the more than 30 second-tier cities, new home prices climbed by 0.1 percent in February, down by 0.1 point from the December-January period. Existing home prices were flat, with growth slowing by 0.3 point.

Editor: Emmi Laine