China's property investment continues to slow

BEIJING - Investment in China's property sector continued to slow in the first ten months of 2015, official data showed o Wednesday.

Real estate investment rose 2 percent year on year to 7.88 trillion yuan ($1.24 trillion) from January to October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

The growth was 0.6 percentage points slower than that in the first three quarters.

Investment in residential housing, which accounts for about two-thirds of total property investment, climbed 1.3 percent from a year earlier, compared with a growth of 1.7 percent in the first nine months.

New housing construction stood at 1.27 billion square meters, down 13.9 percent year on year, with construction of new residential houses dropping 14.7 percent by floor area.

Sales of residential property went up 7.2 percent year on year, 0.3 percentage points lower than that recorded in the Jan-Sept period, the NBS data showed.

China's property market took a downturn in 2014 due to weak demand and a surplus of unsold homes. The cooling has continued into 2015, with both sales and prices falling and investment slowing.

The country has moved to combat the slowdown, easing down payment requirements for home purchases, while some local governments have rolled back their restrictions on home purchases.