BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- China's real estate investment increased 10.9 percent year on year in the first half of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday.
The growth was slower than the 11.8-percent expansion recorded in the first quarter and the 11.2-percent increase in the first five months.
Total property investment in H1 amounted to 6.16 trillion yuan (about 897 billion U.S. dollars), with 73.3 percent flowing into residential housing, the NBS said.
In the period, the investment in residential buildings went up 15.8 percent year on year to 4.52 trillion yuan.
China's real state developers constructed buildings of 7.72 billion square meters in floor area during the same period, an increase of 8.8 percent year on year.
Commercial housing sales measured by floor area came in at 757.86 million square meters in H1, down 1.8 percent year on year, NBS data showed.
Monday's data also showed that home prices in 70 major Chinese cities continued to stabilize with slower month-on-month price increases in June.
New home prices in four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou -- increased 0.2 percent month on month in June, down by 0.1 percentage points from May.
