China Real Estate Information Corp said the amount of sales revenue to be realized to make its top 50 list of best-selling developers dropped by a quarter in the first three months of the year to 2.4 billion yuan ($387 million).

"The market was on a low in the first quarter. Sales declined amid increases in mortgage rates and price falls," said CRIC in a report published on Wednesday.

In terms of area sold, the threshold to make the 50th position dropped by 6 percent, or 15,000 square meters.

The sector further consolidated, with the first 10 companies on the list accounting for 19.69 percent of the total sales revenue of all the 50 companies on the list. China Vanke Co Ltd topped the list with first-quarter sales of 52.81 billion yuan.

Shanghai Securities Journal, a newspaper under the Xinhua News Agency, reported on Wednesday that cities including Hangzhou and Changsha have started discussions on tweaking purchasing restrictions put in place in 2010 by Beijing to check what were then skyrocketing home prices.

Under the restriction, second-home buyers have to pay up to 70 percent as a down payment and pay higher mortgage rates.

The China Index Academy said housing prices in China's 100 biggest cities edged up 0.38 percent in March. It's the 22nd consecutive month-on-month increase. However, the growth rate slowed by 0.16 percentage points from February.

Sixty-three cities saw price increases month-on-month in March, while 37 witnessed a decline.

A recession in the real estate sector, a pillar industry that accounts for around 10 percent of the economy, will deal a further blow to China's economic growth, which has already shown weakness in the first quarter.

Zhang Zhiwei, a Hong Kong-based research analyst with Nomura Securities Co Ltd, said in a report last week that, without further easing, the GDP growth rate will likely drop to below 7 percent in the second or third quarter, well below Beijing's full-year target of 7.5 percent.

He forecast 7.3 percent growth for the first quarter. Both the official and the HSBC manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Indexes deteriorated further in March, with the former dipping to an 11-month low and the latter to an eight-month low after seasonal adjustment.

Wang Tao, a China economist with UBS AG, wrote on Wednesday that power generation, railway transport freight and crude oil processing activities all showed signs of improvement last month, with enterprises becoming more confident about the future.

"Looking ahead, we expect growth momentum to rebound more visibly in the second quarter," wrote Wang.

gaochangxin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 04/04/2014 page19)