BEIJING (Reuters). China’s newly launched home prices stagnated in February, after a modest gain a month prior, data from official sources on Wednesday revealed. The result shows that the country has a weak demand despite a slowing down of authorities to ease property curbs to encourage buying.

Based on the National Bureau of Statistics data, Reuters calculated that average home prices for new homes in China’s top 70 cities were flat at 0.00% monthly, compared to a gain of 0.1% in January.

The new house prices rose by 2.0% in 2015 compared to the December 2015 pace. This is also the slowest increase since December 2015.

China’s property markets slowed sharply in the last year. Beijing’s Deleveraging Campaign triggered liquidity crises in major property developers. These led to bond defaults, plunges in share prices, and unfinished projects.

Smaller cities are home to many easing measures, such as lower down-payments and reduced mortgage rates. Second homes can also be purchased with ease.

Still, the nation is not seeing a rebound due to looser regulations.

In tier-one Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai the monthly new home price growth was 0.5%. This is a sharper increase than January’s 0.6%.

The new homes prices of tier-2 cities which includes some provincial capitals were unchanged in February’s 0.1% rise. However, the prices for tier-3 cities and tier-4 cities dropped 0.3%. This is in addition to January’s 0.2% drop.

Yan Yuejin (research director at E-house China Research and Development, Shanghai) said that there was a slight cooling of prices in January. This indicates resistance to a rebound.

We should be cautious about a sudden cooling of Tier-three and Four cities.

Premier Li Keqiang stated that China would better serve homebuyers legitimate needs and will adopt city-specific policies at the annual meeting.

From 28 cities in January, 27 cities reported price increases.

The recent rise in Omicron domestic cases has also helped to cool the recovering demand in large cities.

Mainland China had 1,952 confirmed cases of coronavirus Tuesday. That’s compared to the 3,602 reported a day prior.

According to Zhang Dawei (chief analyst, Centaline), the outbreaks caused a freeze on home purchases in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou’s eastern cities. However, there has been a slight rebound.

“But” the market should stabilize in March and April as the largest factor is mortgage lending.

The February 336.9 Billion Yuan contraction in household loans was a rarity, most notably mortgages. That contrasted with January’s 843 billion yuan. These data indicate that the weakness of the property market continues, as per central bank data.