Moody's: China's property price growth to slow

BEIJING - China's property price growth will slow further, despite an expected improvement in property sales in the rest of 2014, a Moody's report said.

"We expect national contracted sales for the rest of 2014 to improve moderately, supported by a greater number of new project launches, an increase in mortgage availability and the selective loosening of home purchase restrictions," said Gerwin Ho, a Moody's analyst.

Total contracted sales for China's residential property market extended its falling streak, declining by 10.5 percent year on year to 2.99 trillion yuan ($490.16 billion) for the first seven months of 2014 compared to 3.34 trillion yuan for the same period last year, said the email report on Friday.

But property sales will moderately recover in the coming months, as some cities, such as Foshan in Guangdong and Zhengzhou in Henan, have selectively loosened their regulatory guidelines on home purchase restrictions, or relaxed the execution of these restrictions, Ho said.

Meanwhile, prices growth will likely be constrained as developers are more willing to keep prices low to attract buyers and there will be a rich supply of new projects in the following months, the report forecast.

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