1st LD: China's real estate investment up 7 pct in 2017

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's investment in real estate development grew 7 percent year on year in 2017, 1.1 percentage points slower than in the first three quarters, while 0.1 percentage point faster than a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

The total property investment in 2017 was nearly 11 trillion yuan (about 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars), the NBS said.

Among them, the investment in residential buildings went up by 9.4 percent year on year.

The floor space newly started was 1.79 billion square meters, up by 7 percent year on year. Specially, the newly started floor space of residential buildings surged by 10.5 percent.

The floor space of commercial buildings sold was 1.69 billion square meters, up by 7.7 percent year on year, while the floor space of residential buildings sold went up by 5.3 percent.

The total sales of commercial buildings were 13.37 trillion yuan, up 13.7 percent year on year, among which the sales of residential buildings rose 11.3 percent. Enditem