China Property Recovery Fails to Gain Traction With Prices Dropping

The recovery in China’s property market remains fragile, with new-home prices rising in only one of 70 cities tracked by the government last month and recording their biggest year-on-year decline ever.

Prices fell in 64 cities from the previous month, compared with 65 in December, and were unchanged in four, according to data from the bureau of statistics on Tuesday. Average prices fell 5.1 percent from a year earlier, the biggest drop on record, according to Tom Orlik, chief Asia economist at Bloomberg Intelligence. Ganzhou, in central China’s Jiangxi province, joined Shenzhen in posting an increase in January from December.