BEIJING (Reuters) -China's fragile housing market opened this year with slower declines in property investment and sales, buoyed by government efforts to arrest a protracted downturn in the sector, official data showed on Monday.

Property investment in China fell 9.0% year-on-year in the first two months of 2024, compared with a 24.0% fall in December 2023, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed.

Property sales by floor area logged a 20.5% slide in January-February from a year earlier, compared with a 23.0% fall in December last year.

Official property figures released last week showed the sector struggling to stabilise with home prices down 0.3% on a month-on-month basis in February, in line with a drop in January.

China has been ramping up measures to reinvigorate its fragile property sector after a regulatory crackdown on developer leverage led to a snowballing liquidity crisis.

Authorities launched a so-called "whitelist" mechanism in January, channelling funds from state banks into local property projects identified by city governments as justifiable for financing support.

China last month announced its biggest ever reduction in the benchmark mortgage rates to prop up struggling real estate.

However, market participants mostly remain unswayed with home buying and financing and construction starts for real estate firms continuing to fall.

Household loans, mostly mortgages, contracted 590.7 billion yuan ($82.08 billion) in February, according to Reuters calculations based on central bank data, after rising 980.1 billion yuan in January.

New construction starts measured by floor area plunged 29.7% year-on-year, after an 11.56% plunge in December 2023.

Funds raised by China's property developers were down 24.1% on year after a 17.8% drop in December last year.

($1 = 7.1970 Chinese yuan)