(Yicai Global) July 19 -- House prices in Hangzhou, home to Chinese internet giants such as Alibaba Group Holding and Ant Group, are the highest among China’s new first-tier cities at an average of CNY37,600 (USD5,800) per square meter.

Nanjing and Tianjin took second and third place this month at CNY34,100 and CNY25,800 per sqm, respectively, according to data from the country’s property price information platforms.

The cost of a home in nine of China’s 15 new first-tier cities exceeded CNY20,000 (USD3,000) per sqm. Seven are coastal cities and Changsha, Shenyang, Chongqing, and Zhengzhou -- in central, western and northeastern China -- are at the bottom of the rankings, averaging below CNY15,000 per sqm.

China's new first-tier cities this year are Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Xi’an, Suzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Dongguan, Foshan, Ningbo, Qingdao and Shenyang, per the 2021 Ranking of Cities’ Business Attractiveness recently published by Rising Lab, a big data project of Yicai Media Group, the owner of Yicai Global.

Hangzhou has grown rapidly in recent years driven by the digital economy, which accounted for almost 27 percent of the city’s gross domestic product in the first quarter, according to the eastern city’s statistics bureau. The added value of Hangzhou’s digital economy reached CNY112 billion (USD 17.3 billion) in the first three months of this year, up 28 percent from a year ago.

Another factor that has boosted the city’s development is large population inflows. Hangzhou attracted 436,000 university students below 35 years old last year, and its net talent inflow rate ranked first nationwide, per the city’s government work report.

House prices in Xi’an, in central China, have significantly increased in recent years to reach CNY20,200 per sqm this month thanks to high economic growth and population inflows, Zhang Bo, head of 58 Anjuke Real Estate Research Institute, told Yicai Global. In 2016, Xi’an’s prices were much lower than those in other second tier cities, he added.

Sales of newly built homes in Xi’an rose 1 percent last month from May, and 8.2 percent from the same period last year. July was the 63rd consecutive monthly increase, per data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Editor: Futura Costaglione