(Yicai Global) Jan. 13 -- More people in China plan to purchase properties in the cities where they work, rather than in their hometowns, according to the results of a recent survey. This is a major shift in house buying intentions from previous years when people moved to the cities to earn enough money to buy property back home.

Some 69.5 percent of those polled intend to purchase a home in the municipalities where they work, while 13.4 percent of them want to buy in a commuter town nearby, according to a report published by Chinese life service platform 58 Tongcheng and real estate data provider Anjuke today.

Compared with previous surveys, the demand to purchase back home has weakened significantly. Only 11.9 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase houses in their hometowns, the report said. And just 5.2 percent want to buy in the provincial capitals of their hometown or in other cities near their birthplace.

The poll focused on young people aged between 20 and 40 working in the 20 biggest cities in China who expect to purchase a property within the next five years. Most have a university education. Sixty percent of them have an average monthly revenue of between CNY10,000 (USD1,500) and CNY20,000 per household and half of them have three people in their family.

In 2015 and 2016, the last time when there was an oversupply of real estate on the market, many urban residents returned to their hometowns to buy property, Zhang Bo, head of the 58 Anjuke Real Estate Research Institute, told Yicai Global.

But this time round, the downward pressure on housing prices has had a bigger impact on prices in smaller cities than in bigger ones, Zhang said. As a result, buying a house back home is not seen as a good investment and demand is expected to stay low for the next two to three years.

Of those planning to buy in the cities where they work, 66.7 percent are doing so to help further their careers, 65.7 percent to make their life more convenient, 60.3 percent because they believe the area has good development prospects and more than half because they want to give their children a better education and future.

Almost 30 percent of those polled plan to buy a property within the next year, while half will do so over the next one or two years, the survey said. More than half, at 58.3 percent, are first-time buyers.

Of those planning to buy, 32.5 percent expect to do so over the week-long Lunar New Year break at the end of the month, 48.3 percent will start looking over the holiday but not necessarily make a purchase, while the rest will do their house hunting after the break.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor