(Yicai) June 27 -- Northwestern Shaanxi province’s investment in property development climbed from January to May, arresting the downward trend in the first four months, and the declines in 17 other Chinese provincial-level regions narrowed, as the government rolls out a slew of supportive policies to prop up the flagging real estate market.

Shaanxi province’s investment in real estate development climbed 1.5 percent in the five months ended May 31 from a year earlier, a big turnaround from the 0.6 percent drop in the first four months, the provincial bureau of statistics said on June 24.

Shaanxi province and Shanghai are the only two provincial-level regions to log growth in real estate investment this year. Shanghai posted a 8 percent jump over the period.

Everywhere else, investment has slumped. Although 17 out of the remaining 29 provincial-level regions, including the capital Beijing, reported narrowing declines from January to May, the other 12, including some of the country’s largest economies such as Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, extended their falls.

The steady performance of the property market in Xi’an was the main reason for the uptick in Shaanxi’s investment. Home prices in the provincial capital advanced for 14 straight months before dipping 0.1 percent in May, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Prices, though, were still 3.8 percent higher than a year earlier. This growth is second only to Shanghai’s 4.5 percent among the country’s 70 biggest cities.

Shaanxi province has not overdeveloped its real estate market, the residential housing inventory is not large, so there is stable supply and demand, and developers are confident, Yang Donglang, director of the Real Estate Research Institute of Xi’an Jiaotong University, told Yicai.

China introduced a series of policies to bolster the property market last month, including lowering down payments and abolishing mortgage floor rates, all of which have boosted market sentiment, especially in core cities, said Shi Rui, general manager of China Index Academy Xi’an.

However, the downturn in the country’s real estate sector still shows no sign of ending. Investment in real estate development plunged 10.1 percent in the first five months from a year ago to CNY4.1 trillion (USD564.1 billion), extending the decline in the first four months by 0.3 percentage points, according to data published by the NBS earlier.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor