China's property investment down 6.4% in January-July period

BEIJING - China's investment in property development went down 6.4 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Monday.

The total property investment in the period stood at 7.95 trillion yuan ($1.18 trillion), the NBS said. Investment in residential buildings came in at 6.02 trillion yuan, down 5.8 percent year-on-year.

Although investments declined, the downward trend of the property sector has slowed down thanks to the government's stabilizing policies, NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui told a press conference on Monday, adding that the overall risk in the country's property development projects is controllable.

With the continued improvement of the country's long-term housing mechanism and differentiated regulatory policies, the property market will gradually stabilize to maintain steady and sound development, Fu said.

Monday's data also showed that commercial housing sales in terms of floor area totaled 781.78 million square meters in the January-July period, down 23.1 percent year-on-year. In value, the sales fell 28.8 percent to 7.58 trillion yuan.

The property development climate index compiled by the NBS came in at 95.26 points in July.