BEIJING - Average China property prices in the first seven months rose 12.9% year-on-year to 2,724 yuan (323 dollars) per square meter (10.76 square feet), the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.
The bureau said on its website this was the highest growth rate for the seven-month period since 1996.

It said China property sales surged 41.4% year-on-year to 365.7 billion yuan in the first seven months, with 134 million square meters of property sold, up 25.2%.

The average price of residential property rose 10.4% to 2,480 yuan between January and July, with the average price of office buildings increasing 32.3% to 6,970 yuan and the average price of commercial property up 14.9% at 4,312 yuan.

China invested a total of 605.5 billion yuan in real estate development in the first seven months, up 28.6% from a year earlier, with the growth slowing 5.5 percentage points, the bureau said.

Investment in residential property rose 28.1% year-on-year to 411.1 billion yuan, with investment in office buildings increasing 31.5% to 29.7 billion yuan and investment in commercial property up 35.6% at 76.6 billion yuan.

Investment in budget housing fell 0.5% to 29.2 billion yuan in the first seven months, the first drop in recent years, with such housing accounting for 4.8% of the country's total property, down 1.4 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the national statistics office.

According the bureau, China's vacant property fell 0.8% year-on-year to 96.78 million square meters at the end of July, with 95.6 million square meters of land developed, up 12.2%.

In the first half, China's property prices rose 11.6% year-on-year to an average of 2,701 yuan per square meter.

AFP