By Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo

BEIJING (Reuters) -The prices of new homes in China fell at their fastest pace in more than eight years in March hit by poor demand as debt troubles among property developers dragged on the outlook for an economy seeking to find a firmer footing.

March home prices dropped 2.2% from a year earlier, marking the biggest decline since August 2015, and worse than a 1.4% fall in February, according to Reuters calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.

Prices fell 0.3% month-on-month, matching February's drop.

China's property sector, accounting for nearly a quarter of the economy, has been engulfed by a debt crisis since 2021 after a regulatory crackdown on high leverage among developers triggered a liquidity crunch, with a string of them reporting weaker financial results for 2023 last month.

Authorities have been ramping up measures to prop up the troubled sector, including relaxing home purchase curbs, supporting urban village renovation, and pushing banks to quicken new loan approvals to cash-strapped developers.

But analysts say many of these policies are piecemeal in nature or have only limited short-term impact, which in turn is keeping home buying sentiment in check and curbing a broader full-blown recovery.

Declines in home prices worsened year-on-year in tier-one, tier-two and tier-three cities.

Potential buyers have also been wary of purchasing new homes because of concerns about the ability of indebted developers to deliver projects on time.

주택이 제때 공급될 수 있도록 부동산 프로젝트까지 자금 지원을 확대해야 한다고 중국 경제 차르인 허 라이프펑(He Lifeng) 부총리가 지난 주말 말했다.

제때 주택을 인도하는 것은 기대를 안정시키는 데 도움이 될 것이라고 그는 중부 도시 정저우에서 시찰 투어에서 말했다.