The central parity rate of the Chinese currency renminbi, or the yuan, strengthened 1 pip to 6.7909 against the U.S. dollar Thursday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.
In China's spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 2 percent from the central parity rate each trading day.
The central parity rate of the yuan against the U.S. dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day.
Chinese yuan strengthens to 6.7909 against USD Thursday
Prices for existing homes in China's four first-tier cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, continued their upward momentum for a fourth consecutive month in June, according data from the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.
In June, existing home prices in first-tier cities rose by 0.3 percent from May. Beijing saw a 0.1 percent increase, while Shanghai and Guangzhou each recorded a 0.4 percent rise, and Shenzhen posted a 0.3 percent gain.
The existing home transactions in Beijing reached 16,618 units in June, up about 10 percent from 15,139 units in the same month last year, according to online contract signing data from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
For the first half of this year as a whole, total transaction for existing homes in the capital hit 93,583 units, a 5.7 percent increase year on year, marking the highest first-half figure in five years.
Similarly, according to data from the Shanghai Real Estate Trading Center, the city's existing home transactions, including commercial properties, totaled 25,158 units in June, marking the fourth consecutive month that volumes have exceeded the 25,000-unit threshold. Over the first six months of the year, cumulative transactions in Shanghai surpassed 147,000 units, also hitting a five-year high for the same period.
In Guangzhou, the market remained active in June after the city issued a package of eight measures, including raising housing provident fund loan limits and launching a temporary subsidy program for home upgrades.
The transaction area of pre-owned residential property in the city reached 918,200 square meters in June, up 3.7 percent year-on-year.
"This year's transaction volume for existing homes has been more active than in the first half of last year, especially from March to May, when it continued to climb higher. The implementation of the eight measures for Guangzhou, along with the increase in the housing provident fund loan limit and the subsidy program for home upgrades, just happened to attract a large number of buyers with rigid housing demand," said Huang Liping, sales manager at a real estate agency in Guangzhou.
"In the first half of the year, there was also a very obvious phenomenon that residents' expectations have become more stable. This is prominently reflected in the fact that the phenomenon of existing home owners lowering prices significantly when listing their properties for sale has improved notably in the first half of this year," said Li Yujia, chief researcher at the Guangdong Provincial Housing Policy Research Center.
Data from the Shenzhen Real Estate Intermediary Association showed that Shenzhen recorded 6,168 resale home transactions in June, up 11.2 percent from a year earlier.
For the first half of 2026, cumulative resale residential transactions in the city reached 33,892 units, a 5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2025.
Existing home prices in first-tier cities up for 4th consecutive month in June
