More Chinese cities saw home prices rise in October from September despite the government's dogged efforts to curb property prices, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Sunday.

In October, 35 cities, up from 31 in September, out of a statistical pool of 70 major cities recorded higher new home prices than a month earlier, the data showed.

On a month-on-month basis, new home prices in 17 cities fell in October, down from 24 in September, while those in the other 18 cities remained unchanged, the data showed.

On a year-on-year basis, more cities saw drops in new home prices last month, with 56 out of the 70 cities witnessing price drops, up from 55 in September. Prices either rose or stayed flat in the remaining 14 cities.

Home transactions have picked up over the past month, the traditional peak season for housing sales in the country, on the back of recent government policies to bolster a slowing economy.

NBS data showed that home sales rose 5.6 percent year on year to 4.63 trillion yuan (736 billion U.S. dollars) in the first 10 months, accelerating by 2.9 percentage points from the January-September period.

The increase came after the central bank earlier this year twice cut interest rates and banks' reserve requirement ratio, or the amount banks are asked to set side as reserves, to buoy the slowing economy.

The economy's growth slowed to a seven-quarter low of 7.4 percent in the third quarter, weighed down by a lackluster external market and government efforts to cool inflation and the runaway real estate sector.

The government has repeatedly reiterated its firm stance on property market control and vowed to keep in place tightening measures like bans on third-home purchases and property tax trials, which have been introduced one after another since 2010.

In the latest move to dispel expectations for policy easing, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin said Monday that the government will not relax current restrictions on home purchases in the short term, and it may expand the property tax program when the time is right.

Real estate investment accounts for about 13 percent of China's gross domestic output and one-fifth of the country's fixed-asset investment.

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