China's Housing Continues Price Slide

From the Strait Times:

    New home prices in 70 cities, excluding state-subsidised housing, declined 0.3 per cent last month from August, when they slipped 0.29 per cent, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed on Thursday. Prices slid 0.48 per cent in the secondary market.

    Chinese developers are grappling with a prolonged slump that has starved them of cash, delayed completion of apartments and deprived the economy of a key growth driver. Home sales and property investment remained a drag on economic output in the last quarter, underscoring why policymakers have taken steps recently to rekindle demand.

    The real estate crisis marked another grim milestone this week when Country Garden Holdings, once the nation’s biggest builder, signalled that it was likely to default on a United States dollar bond for the first time.

    Falling prices are a deterrent to home buyers in a country where property has long been one of the main stores of wealth. Sentiment is also worsening among investors, with a Bloomberg Intelligence index of Chinese developer shares falling to a 14-year low on Wednesday.