BEIJING - China's real estate investment increased 11.6 percent year-on-year in the first two months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.

  The growth was faster than the 9.5-percent expansion recorded in 2018.

  The total property investment in the first two months amounted to 1.2 trillion yuan ($180.3 billion), with 72.1 percent used in residential buildings, the NBS said.

  In the January-February period, the investment in residential buildings surged 18 percent year-on-year to 871.1 billion yuan, 4.6 percentage points faster than the pace in 2018, according to the NBS.

  During the same period, China's real state developers built buildings of 6.75 billion square meters in floor area, an increase of 6.8 percent year-on-year.

  Commercial housing sales measured by floor area came in at 141 million square meters in the first two months, down 3.6 percent year-on-year, with the sales in value exceeding 1.28 trillion yuan, up 2.8 percent from a year earlier.