The appetite for property investment among urban Chinese households dropped to a 20-month low in November, according to a survey conducted by global market research company Nielsen for the Bank of Communications (BoCom), China’s fifth-largest bank by assets. The bimonthly property investment index dropped to 109 last month from 113 in September, its lowest since March 2016, the Shanghai-based bank said.

“Property investment enthusiasm from top urban households was dampened by governmental measures to cool down speculation, and the number of rental houses added to supply,” said the bank. The findings are part of a broader index that has gauged urban wealth based on the opinions of 1,800 well-off Chinese households every two months since late 2010. Nielsen was commissioned to conduct a survey of households with an annual after-tax income of more than CNY100,000 in the top five cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu, as well as those with incomes of at least CNY80,000 in another 21 major cities. The drop in enthusiasm was felt more among the most affluent households, as the index dropped by 10 points to 114 for families with non-fixed assets of more than CNY1 million.

In the first 10 months of this year, home sales by area grew by 8.2%, down from a pace of 9.3% in the first three quarters of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Sales growth also slowed down by value by 2 percentage points to 12.6%.

There could be a limited upside to China’s property prices going into 2018. Property transactions will shrink in volume, according to a majority of the 51 financial institutions and more than 20 developers who assembled for a meeting on November 16 organized by the China Index Academy in Beijing.

The value of China’s property loans, loans for developers and mortgages grew at a slower pace during the first three quarters to CNY31.1 trillion, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The growth rate slowed by 2.4 percentage points to 22.8% compared with last year, the South China Morning Post reports.

The number of property developers in China could fall from around 30,000 to only the single-digit thousands or even hundreds in the next five years as the country’s red-hot market cools, according to Swiss bank UBS Group