Beijing housing transactions drastically fell in Q1

Residential housing transactions in Beijing showed a drastic decline of over 60 percent in the first quarter, data from a real estate agency showed, but analysts noted that despite the dismal transaction data, the housing sector will remain stable this year.

Around 40,000 units of residential housing were sold as of Tuesday this year, down an alarming 65 percent compared with the same period in 2013, newspaper Beijing Business Today reported Friday, citing data from real estate agency Homelink.

Earlier this month, a residential project of leading developer China Vanke in Beijing was put on sale at a price at least 3,000 yuan ($483) lower than market expectations.

Residential housing transactions in Shanghai and Guangzhou also dropped around 30 percent in the first quarter. "The recent moves of local governments to tighten credit as well as people's wait-and-see attitude have contributed to the drop in transactions," said Liu Yuan, a research manager at the Centaline China Property Research Center.

He further noted that a high base number in the first quarter of 2013 also contributed to the plunge.

Housing transactions in the first quarter of 2013 were very high as many people rushed to make purchases before the government started to apply a curbing policy in April last year.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics released last week also showed that housing prices in first-tier cities increased over 10 percent year-on-year in February.

But Liu noted that the housing market in lower-tier cities will generally remain stable. The city of Baoding, in North China's Hebei Province, is even showing a major increase in the number of housing transactions, on top of the plan that the city is going to shoulder some administrative functions for Beijing in the future.