(Yicai Global) April 17 -- House prices in 70 large and mid-sized Chinese cities rose on a monthly basis in March as life began to return to normal given the subsiding number of domestic Covid-19 cases.

The price of new build homes in China’s traditional first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- climbed 0.2 percent on average, according to data the National Bureau of Statistics published yesterday. Second-hand home prices jumped 0.5 percent.

Local governments brought in preferential policies to help real estate firms get back to work, such as reducing the threshold for land transfers, easing restrictions on pre-sales, offering subsidies and tax cuts and helping them draw in talent, said Zhang Dawei, chief analyst at Centaline Property Agency. Covid-19 froze demand but now China has the virus largely under control, the market should make a full recovery and return to the levels seen last year in the second quarter of 2020, he added.

Regional governments brought in 60 new real estate regulations and 75 in February, according to Centaline data, though the cities of Guangzhou, Jinan, Haining and Baoji have already withdrawn policies that eased house buying restrictions and lowered down payment requirements.

New home prices in 31 second-tier cities rose 0.3 percent on the month in March, while those of second-hand houses climbed 0.2 percent after remaining unchanged for two straight months, the NBS figures showed. In 35 third-tier cities, new property prices increased by 0.2 percent and second-hand prices edged up 0.1 percent. Not one person in Xiangyang, Hubei province, made a sale in March.

The recovery in first- and second-tier cities was obvious, Securities Daily cited Guo Shiying, an analyst at Zhuge Zhaofang Data Research Center, as saying. Third-tier cities are recovering more slowly as people are less confident in smaller cities because of the virus, he added.

Editor: James Boynton