Realty market stays on even keel

Despite the convention that October is the peak season for property trading, property prices in the nation's major cities remained stable, and pre-owned home prices in top-tier cities declined month-on-month, National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Thursday.

Local governments maintained their grip on property speculation, implementing tailored measures in accordance with their own conditions. The tightening moves have helped the property market return to rational levels as the October figure showed new home price growth was slower month-on-month and pre-owned home prices in first-tier cities started to decline, said Liu Jianwei, a senior statistician at the NBS.

New home prices in the first-tier Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen remained unchanged in October compared to September, while their pre-owned home prices edged down by an average of 0.2 percent month-on-month, according to the NBS index that tracks home price changes in the nation's 70 major cities.