China’s October new home prices fall at fastest pace in a year

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s new home prices fell at their fastest pace in a year in October, official data showed on Friday, highlighting persistently weak demand in the crisis-hit property sector.

Prices fell 0.5% month-on-month, the steepest decline since October last year, after a 0.4% drop in September, according to Reuters calculations based on data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

On an annual basis, home prices fell 2.2% in October, matching the rate of decline from the previous month.

(Reporting by Liangping Gao, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes)