Beijing housing sales slump 35%

BEIJING - Home sales in Beijing slumped 34.9 percent year on year in the first five months of the year, a sign of cooling in property sector.

Real estate developers in the city sold 3.29 million square meters of housing during the period, the municipal bureau of statistics said in a statement Monday. Housing starts edged 0.3 percent lower to 4.84 million square meters.

Sales of commercial buildings, which include residential and commercial property, fell 33.6 percent year on year to 4.54 million square meters, it said.

Sales of residential property in China fell 7.7 percent during the first quarter of 2014 to 1.1 trillion yuan ($175 billion). Month to month, home prices have been falling in more of the pool of 70 major cities surveyed by the National Bureau of Statistics.