China's home price decline narrows year on year in November

BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The decline in the prices of commercial residential homes in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities narrowed on a year-on-year basis in November, official data showed on Monday.

The 70 cities are categorized into three tiers within the country, and each tier reported a narrowed decline last month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In the four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen -- new home prices dropped 4.3 percent year on year, a decline narrowing 0.3 percentage points from October.

Notably, Shanghai, China's economic hub, saw a 5 percent increase in new home prices last month, the NBS said.

Second-hand home prices in the first-tier cities went down 8 percent last month, 1.6 percentage points narrower than the decline in October.

For the 31 second-tier and 35 third-tier cities across the country, data also showed narrower drops in both new and second-hand home prices in November, according to the NBS.