China's new home prices fell for the first time this year in July, official data showed on Wednesday, as piecemeal policy support failed to shore up the embattled property sector, heaping pressure on authorities to introduce bolder stimulus. The 0.2 per cent fall month-on-month came after June's flat reading, according to Reuters calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data. Prices were down 0.1 per cent from a year earlier, after a flat result in June. The decline in home prices comes amid a worsening debt crisis at major developers, sliding property investment and home sales. Taken together with ... (full story)