Housing prices rise in more Chinese cities

New home prices rose more steeply in more Chinese cities in February, putting the government in an increasingly complex situation of regulating the bubble-ridden market, official data showed Monday. Of a statistical pool of 70 major Chinese cities monitored by the National Bureau of Statistics, 66 cities saw home prices increase within 3.1 percent in February from a month earlier, while three saw prices remain unchanged and only one reported price falls. The figures indicate warming in the housing market since January, when 53 cities reported a growth margin of no more than 2.2 percent. New home prices in Beijing and Guangzhou saw the largest increase of 3.1 percent on a month-on-month basis, followed by Shanghai and Shenzhen with price hikes of 2.3 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. East China's Wenzhou reported home prices declining by 0.4 percent from January, the data showed. On a year-on-year basis, 62 cities registered rising prices, with Guangzhou showing the biggest rise, of 8.2 percent, up drastically from January's highest growth rate of 4.7 percent. Beijing recorded the second-largest year-on-year growth of 7.7 percent. Wenzhou, meanwhile saw its home prices plunge 10.7 percent from the same period of last year.