SHANGHAI--The rebound in China's property market lost some momentum in June, with smaller gains in housing sales in June holding back investment growth.
Housing sales rose 44.4% in the first half of the year to 4.18 trillion yuan ($625 billion), according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics Friday. In the first five months of this year, housing sales jumped 53.4%.
In terms of floor area, housing sales rose 27.9% compared with the year earlier in the January-to-June period.
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In June alone, housing sales rose 21.8% on-year by value, slower than the 32.9% rise recorded in May, calculations by The Wall Street Journal showed.
Some so-called second tier cities are following the lead from the top-tier cities by implementing property cooling measures such as increased restrictions on loans to home-buyers, following concerns that their housing markets are becoming too frothy. Other smaller cities plagued with large inventories such as Jinhua in Zhejiang province, are offering cash subsidies to home-buyers as part of the country's broader property-destocking mandate.
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Investment growth in China's real-estate development rose 6.1% to 4.66 trillion yuan, down from the 7.0% gain recorded in the first five months this year.
Construction starts across residential and commercial real estate rose 14.9% on-year to 755.4 million square meters, moderating from the 18.3% gain recorded in the first five months of 2016.
-- Li Pei contributed to this article.