Urban home market still in doldrums

Urban housing prices continued to drop in January, as potential home buyers were still reluctant to loosen the purse strings in a market downturn.

Average housing prices of China's 70 major cities dropped 0.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the steepest annual decline since official records began in 2005, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile, housing prices dropped 0.2 percent compared to December, when for the first time home prices dropped over a year ago since the bureau started publishing the index.