Property prices in China's major cities kept rising in May, one month before the latest round of macro control measures were introduced, government figures show.

Property prices in 70 large cities rose by 5.8 per cent year-on-year, 0.7 percentage points higher than the growth rate in April, according to a survey released yesterday by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics.

Prices for newly built homes  climbed 6.1 per cent last month from a year earlier, 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous month, the statistics showed.

Residential property prices in Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, climbed 15.2 per cent year-on-year in May, the highest increase among the 70 cities surveyed.

Next came Shenzen, a booming city in South China's Pearl River Delta region, which reported a 13.7 per cent year-on-year increase in  residential property prices.
Housing prices in Beijing rose 9 per cent year-on-year in May.

The statistics showed that six cities saw residential housing prices falling in May from the previous month.

Shanghai witnessed the prices of apartments dropping by 6.2 per cent compared with the same period last year.

"My sense is that the real price rises are much higher than the reported figures," said Yi Xianrong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a long critic of the property market.

"But these figures do show the need for strong government action," he said.

Effective from June 1, the minimum down payment for an apartment larger than 90 square metres was raised from the previous 20 per cent to 30 per cent.

The down payment ratio for apartments smaller than 90 square metres remained unchanged at 20 per cent.

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