Housing prices in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities rose 9.5 percent in January 2010 from a year earlier, and were up 1.3 percent compared to the previous month, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday.

It is the fastest year-on-year growth in 19 months. The year-on-year house price growth rate was 1.7 percentage points higher than that of December last year, said the NBS.

Prices of new houses in January rose 11.3 percent from the same month last year, and were up 1.7 percent from December last year.

In January, prices of second-hand houses in the 70 main cities rose 8 percent from the previous year, and 0.9 percent from the previous month.

(Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2010)