Mainland China’s new and existing home prices posted a smaller month-on-month decline in January, but the annual drop widened, indicating a housing market that has yet to find a clear floor, analysts said.
Commercial residential prices across 70 major cities fell at a slower pace from December on a monthly basis, while new-home prices in the four tier-one cities dropped 2.1 per cent year on year, 0.4 percentage points steeper than the previous month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.
Shanghai was the only tier-one city to record annual growth in new-home prices, rising 4.2 per cent. Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen posted declines of 2.4 per cent, 5.3 per cent and 4.9 per cent, respectively, with the pace of falls accelerating in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Second-hand home prices in tier-one cities dropped 7.6 per cent year on year, widening by 0.6 percentage points from December, with all four cities registering declines, NBS data showed.
“In our view, China’s nationwide home prices have not yet shown signs of stabilisation. On a year-on-year basis, the rate of price decline for primary and secondary homes quickened again in January across tier-one to tier-three cities,” said Edward Chan, a director at S&P Global Ratings.
“The continued price drop for primary and secondary homes on a month-on-month basis in January 2026 across tier-one to tier-three cities also does not suggest price stabilisation, in our opinion,” Chan added.
A Goldman Sachs report released on Friday said the sequential downturn in house prices remained broad-based across all city tiers.