As curbs take effect, preowned home prices fall in top-tier cities

Transactions are down too, but demand shifts to lower-tier cities, sparking concerns

Recent measures against speculative property investments have begun to have the desired impact of reining in runaway preowned home prices and cooling the transaction frenzy in top-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, said analysts.

But the unintended side-effect is that demand is shifting to smaller cities where prices of both homes and land are surging.