China's property climate index drops in May

BEIJING - BEIJING - China's property market has shown more signs of cooling with the property development climate index dropping 0.77 points from April to 95.02 points in May, official data showed on Friday.

The figure has declined month on month for four consecutive months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This index takes into consideration multiple aspects of the industry, including property investment as well as the area of property sold and sales volume.

In nominal terms, the country's investment in property development rose 14.7 percent year on year to 3.07 trillion yuan ($500 billion) in the first five months, slowing by 1.7 percentage points from the Jan-April period.

The total area of property sales dropped 7.8 percent year on year in the first five months to 360.70 million square meters. The drop was 0.9 percentage points steeper than the decline seen in the Jan-April period.

Property sales volume was down by 8.5 percent year on year during this period, compared with a drop of 7.8 percent in the first four months, according to the NBS.

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