BEIJING — China’s real estate investment increased 10.9 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on July 15.

The growth was slower than the 11.8-percent expansion recorded in the first quarter and the 11.2-percent increase in the first five months.

Total property investment in H1 amounted to 6.16 trillion yuan (about $897 billion), with 73.3 percent flowing into residential housing, the NBS said.

In the period, the investment in residential buildings went up 15.8 percent year-on-year to 4.52 trillion yuan.

China’s real state developers constructed buildings of 7.72 billion square meters in floor area during the same period, an increase of 8.8 percent year-on-year.

Commercial housing sales measured by floor area came in at 757.86 million square meters in the first half of this year, down 1.8 percent year-on-year, NBS data showed.

The data on July 15 also showed that home prices in 70 major Chinese cities continued to stabilize with slower month-on-month price increases in June.

New home prices in four first-tier cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou — increased 0.2 percent month-on-month in June, down by 0.1 percentage points from May.