China's property investmentsales soften
China's real estate investment cooled in August on slower construction and falling home sales, as authorities' tight controls on the sector continued to take out speculative heat. A slowing property market could sharply increase the risks to China's economic outlook, especially if a tit-for-tat trade war with the United States worsens. China's economy, the world's second-largest, is already under pressure from a vigorous multi-year government financial deleveraging campaign to tackle debt risks, and developers have faced a funding squeeze as authorities tightened lending to the sector, although funding appears to have improved of late. Real estate has been one of the few bright spots on China's investment front, partly due to robust sales in smaller cities, with spending proving resilient against government efforts to tame hot property prices. However, funding conditions for China's real estate developers have improved as policymakers doled out more growth-boosting measures that helped overall liquidity.
Tags : INTERNATIONAL