What's another 0.2% decline to a sinking Chinese home market?

February saw China's 70-city housing price index slide for the 7th straight month.

Since the tailspin started last July, prices have sagged a cumulative 1.2% said BBVA in a daily flash report. This month, the main drag was widespread weakness in the indexed cities, with 45 out of the 70 suffering from price hits.

Here's more from BBVA:

China’s official 70-city housing price index for the month of February was released over the weekend, showing a seventh consecutive month-on-month decline. In particular, the data show that prices of new homes declined in 45 cities, broadly similar to last month, when 48 cities showed price declines. On a sequential basis, we estimate that nationwide housing prices declined by 0.2%, making for a cumulative decline of a rather modest 1.2% since prices began falling last July.

Given its large contribution to overall investment, the housing sector has been of intense interest as market participants try to gauge risks of a hard landing in China. We continue to view recent developments in the housing market so far as rather benign, in line with our expectations of modest price declines this year, although price declines have been somewhat larger in individual markets where overvaluation has been most significant, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Chinese policymakers have recently emphasized that they will persist with measures to ensure housing affordability.