New home prices declined in most Chinese cities surveyed in March, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In March, 46 of the statistical pool of 70 major cities saw drops in new home prices from February, while new home prices in 16 cities remained unchanged.

Eight cities, up from four in February, saw gains of less than 0.2 percent in new home prices.

On a year-on-year basis, 38 cities saw new home price declines in March, up from 27 in February.

Price declines were mainly because cashstrapped property developers chose to lower prices to work off their overloaded inventories and some commercial banks lowered mortgage rates for first-home buyers to boost sales, said Ma Xiaoming, a statistician from the NBS.

Prices of second-hand homes stopped growing in 54 cities in March, compared with 59 cities in February.