BEIJING - Sales of commercial housing units fell 11.8 percent year-on-year to reach 1.24 trillion yuan ($197 billion) in value in the first four months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

As the property market remains weak, investment in real estate development in the January-April period increased 18.7 percent from a year ago to 1.58 trillion yuan, slowing 4.8 percentage points from the January-March period, according to the NBS data.