A real estate project under construction in Yichang, Central China's Hubei Province, on January 4 Photo: IC

A survey of property prices for newly built housing in 70 large Chinese cities in December 2018 shows the real estate sector is still strong, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday. 

Top cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province witnessed housing price rises at the end of 2018 of 1 percent, 0.6 percent, 3 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively, as compared with a month earlier, the NBS said. 

According to Liu Jianwei, an NBS senior statistician, December prices for new commercial housing rose in first-tier cities compared with November 2018, but prices of second-hand homes decreased. Housing prices in second-tier cities remained stable. 

Liu noted the average price growth of new commercial houses and second-hand homes in first and second-tier cities declined year-on-year. 

Guangzhou saw the strongest growth in property prices, up 3 percent in December 2018 month-on-month. 

High demand and market expectations have driven up local home prices in Guangzhou, said Yan Yuejin, a research director at E-house China R&D Institute.

The home price hike in first-tier cities shows that local authorities have less control on high-price projects, and home  prices in first-tier cities will continue to see stable growth in the future, Yan said.

Yan forecast that the slowdown in economic growth and fluctuations in global markets will bring challenges to the domestic property market, but there is not much scope for property prices to decline. "The authorities will continue to regulate the home market, second-hand homes in particular," he said.

The NBS also noted that in three out of 15 popular cities, the price of new commercial housing dropped, with the largest decline at 0.4 percent.