China home prices rise in November

The price of homes in large Chinese cities continued to rise from a year earlier in November, despite government efforts to cool the market. New home prices rose month on month in 66 of the 70 major cities monitored by the government last month, up from 65 in October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday. Average home prices in these cities climbed 0.6 percent in November from the previous month, slowing from a 0.7-percent rise in October as local governments ramped up supply of affordable housing and strengthened policies to curb purchasing, according to the bureau's statistician Liu Jianwei. Compared with a year ago, all the cities except Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province reported gains in new home prices last month, NBS said. Prices of second-hand housing in 63 of the 70 cities saw a month-on-month rise while 68 reported a price increase compared with the same month last year.