China’s property market has warmed slightly since the beginning of 2019, according to Mi Yang, acting head of research at JLL North China.

“The numbers published this morning is largely followed by market expectations. The slight warming up of residential market refers to the continuation on average growth since March. We do see slight increase, below one percent on every month,” Mi said.

Four first-tier cities saw new home prices increase 0.3 percent month-on-month in May, and prices of new houses rose 0.8 percent in May from the previous month in 31 second-tier cities and 35 third-tier cities, based on official data published Tuesday.

“Actually the warming that we have been talking about since March continues in most of cities in China. We only saw two cities recorded a price reduction in this month,” he added.

He mentioned that different cities are managing property markets differently, followed by the “one city, one policy” strategy.

“Different cities actually use different policies to best suit the local market. On the one hand, some cities are loosening policies in order to stimulate the market. On the other hand, we see local governments of hot cities have some cooling down measures to avoid speculation,” Mi told CGTN.

Meanwhile, JLL observed that some second-tier cities have stronger activities than before in terms of land sales.

“Because the expectation for market activities and the financial situations are getting better, those developers are enhancing their stage in second-tier cities, such as Suzhou and Hefei,” Mi explained. But he also claimed that for sectors like commercial real estate, JLL has seen slowing down in demand side.

(CGTN)