Home price growth slows, further moderation eyed

In Beijing's case, new home prices last month surged by 15.5 percent year on year and existing house sales grew 15.9 percent year on year.

Home prices in other first-tier cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, all rose more than 10 percent year on year last month.

More Chinese cities see home prices decline

'No crisis' in housing within a decade

"More than a month after the Spring Festival, there have been some subtle changes in the psychology between property developers and home buyers," Zhang said.

Centaline data showed that the home sales of 30 property enterprises dropped 39 percent month on month in February to 66.5 billion yuan ($10.84 billion).

According to the NBS, the sales value of residential properties in China went down 5 percent year on year to 598.5 billion yuan in the first two months, while the amount of housing floor space sold during the period went down 1.2 percent year on year.

The drop in sales has led some companies to sacrifice prices to promote sales. Recently, media reports have focused on price cuts in some new developments of Hangzhou, Nanjing and Guangzhou.

Zhang said that those cases are strong signals for further price declines in first- and second-tier cities, significantly affecting the psychology of potential home buyers.

"Although these are only isolated cases right now, we can not rule out the possibility that they may expand into a new trend," Zhang said.

Lu said doubt over the housing market could remain because of the government's continued emphasis on affordable housing.

The government work report released earlier this month pledged to improve the affordable housing system and set a target to begin construction on more than 7 million units and complete over 4.7 million units of affordable housing in 2014.

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