BEIJING, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Home prices in major Chinese cities largely remained stable in June as local governments stick to strengthened property curbs, official data showed Tuesday.

On a yearly basis, new residential housing prices in four first-tier cities including Beijing and Shanghai stayed basically flat from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement on its website.

Price growth of new homes in 31 second-tier cities expanded by 0.9 percentage point from that of May, while that of 35 third-tier cities remained the same as in May, according to the NBS data based on a survey of 70 cities.