China’s Jan-Feb property investment declines narrow

BEIJING  — China’s fragile housing market opened this year with slower declines in property investment and sales, buoyed by government efforts to arrest a protracted downturn in the sector, official data showed on Monday.

Property investment in China fell 9 percent year-on-year in the first two months of 2024, compared with a 24-percent fall in December 2023, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed.Property sales by floor area logged a 20.5-percent slide in January-February from a year earlier, compared with a 23-percent fall in December last year.

Official property figures released last week showed the sector struggling to stabilize with home prices down 0.3 percent on a month-on-month basis in February, in line with a drop in January.China has been ramping up measures to reinvigorate its fragile property sector after a regulatory crackdown on developer leverage led to a snowballing liquidity crisis.