THE number of Chinese cities recording month-on-month home price increases fell further in June as tightening measures to rein in speculation remain in place, the National Bureau of Statistics said today.

Excluding government-funded affordable housing, new home prices rose in 63 of the 70 cities monitored by the bureau, compared with 65 in May and 67 in April. In the pre-owned housing market, 55 cities saw monthly growth last month, down from 64 in May and 66 in April.

Data showed that new home prices in 38 cities registered slower month-on-month rises, an increase of 4 cities from May. The maximum monthly growth recorded last month was 2.4 percent, down from 2.9 percent in May. The existing home market saw a similar trend, with 34 cities registering slower increases, compared to 38 cities in May. Prices of pre-occupied homes rose by up to 1.3 percent in June, down 0.4 percentage points from May.

Nationwide, Fuzhou in southeastern Fujian Province saw the biggest increase in new home price at 2.4 percent last month, closely trailed by Shanghai's 2.2 percent rise. Elsewhere, Beijing and Shenzhen both recorded a monthly rise of 1.7 percent while price in Guangzhou climbed 1 percent.

Five cities -- Guiyang, Urumqi, Ganzhou, Shaoguan and Luzhou -- saw price dips last month, all by 0.1 percent, according to data released by the bureau. Haikou and Wuxi, however, remained unchanged.

"The number of cities seeing price gains continued to decline last month in both new and existing market," said Liu Jianwei, a senior statistician at the bureau. "About half of the cities we track recorded narrowed increases with second- and third-tier cities such as Guilin, Baotou, Taiyuan and Shenyang seeing their price growth decelerating the most."

Separate data released earlier by the bureau also showed somewhat stabilized sentiment among the country's homebuyers.

New home purchases in China rose 46 percent to 2.82 trillion yuan (US$459 billion) in the first half of this year, decelerating from its annual growth of 56.8 percent in the first five months and the 65.2 percent rise registered in the January-April period, the bureau said earlier this week.

Despite easing sentiment, industry analysts expect housing prices to remain solid.

"From a pure supply and demand perspective, we don't see significant downward pressure on housing price in the second half of this year," said Frank Chen, executive director and head of research at CB Richard Ellis China. "However, this could be altered with noticeable changes of the overall monetary environment, especially bank's lending to the real estate sector."