BEIJING, March 18 -- China's property market in major cities continued to stabilize after the authorities took a string of measures to curb price spikes, according to an official survey released Saturday.

Of 70 large and medium-sized cities surveyed, more than half of them in February witnessed a month-on-month price decline or a mild price uptick less than 0.5 percent for new residential housing, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Among those cities, 12 of them saw a month-on-month price drop, with new residential housing prices in two cities remaining flat in February, said NBS senior statistician Liu Jianwei.

Another 37 cities witnessed month-on-month price increases less than 0.5 percent for newly-built homes in February, while 19 cities saw home price gains higher than 0.5 percent last month.

New residential house prices in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai rose 0.1 percent on average in February on a month-on-month basis, while the second-tier and third-tier cities registered price increases of 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively.