(Yicai Global) Jan. 11 -- Home prices in 45 percent of Chinese cities with populations in excess of 1 million are less than CNY10,000 (USD1,476) per square meter, showing that the cost of a home is not necessarily high in urban centers with big populations.

Prices have sunk to that level in 48 of the 106 cities, with the lowest at less than CNY5,000 (USD738) per sqm, according to data from national price quotations platform Creprice.

The 48 cities include Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province with more than 5 million permanent residents, as well as three other big municipalities -- Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province; Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; and Changchun, capital of Jilin province -- with populations ranging from 3 million to 5 million.

The 48 cities are mainly located in the central and western part of China, the northeast as well as eastern Shandong province. Economically strong cities such as Yantai and Weifang in Shandong do not have very high housing prices in general.

The five largest cities with the lowest prices are all in the northeast. Among them, Qiqihar in Heilongjiang province is the only big city that has an average unit price of less than CNY5,000, at CNY4,902 per sqm.

Industrialization and urbanization began relatively early in northeast China, with cities there having a relatively large housing stock because urban populations there were relatively high until the early 1990s, Yi Baozhong, a professor at Jilin University’s College of Northeast Asian Studies, told Yicai Global.

But in recent years, the economic growth of prefecture-level cities in the northeast has been relatively slow, and the size of urban population has not changed much, he pointed out.

In the northeast, population flow is mainly to the four cities of Shenyang, Dalian, Changchun, and Harbin as well as the developed areas along China’s southeast coast. There is more housing stock and less new demand, so the overall prices in large northeastern cities are relatively low, Yi said.

Editor: Shi Yi, Peter Thomas