(Guangzhou) – Home prices in four cities close to Shenzhen have surged just as the southern city's housing market sees its first signs of cooling after a long period of feverish growth.

Huizhou, Dongguang, Zhuhai and Zhongshan were among the top 10 cities nationwide in which home prices grew the fastest in April, according to the China Index Academy, a real estate information provider.

Analysts say the increase was driven largely by homebuyers from Shenzhen, including people who purchase properties for investment and those who were priced out of the city. The average price of new homes in Shenzhen rose by more than 37 percent last year – more than anywhere else in the country – to a record of nearly 32,900 yuan per square meter, the city government says.

Shenzhen's government moved to rein in prices on March 25 by narrowing the pool of eligible buyers and raised requirements for down payments.

In April, the number of second-hand homes sold in the city fell by 56 percent from the previous month, according to data from Centaline Property, a real estate services provider.

More importantly, the second-hand homes were sold for an average of about 54,800 yuan per square meter, down 2.39 percent compared with March, the first such decline in 18 months.

Huizhou and Dongguan, which both border Shenzhen's northern areas, were among the first to be hit by the spillover effect of the city's property boom.

More than 90 percent of homes sold last year in two of Huizhou's districts that border Shenzhen were bought by people who live or work in Shenzhen, said Huizhou Real Estate Association, an industry group.

The home prices in some residential communities in those districts have reached up to 20,000 yuan per square meter, more than double the long-term average, according to the Southern Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece in Guangdong Province.

The newspaper also said that in March more than 2 million square meters of housing was sold in Huizhou – nearly twice the amount of inventory that the city government recently said it aimed to have sold by the end of 2018.

In Dongguan, a record amount of housing area was sold last year, including about 40 percent to buyers from Shenzhen, data from Centaline Property show.

The housing markets in Zhuhai and Zhongshan, to the southwest of Shenzhen across the Pearl River estuary, got a boost when local governments said they would start building a bridge this year that would reduce travel time between Shenzhen and Zhongshan to 20 minutes from hours. The bridge is expected to be finished in five years.

In April, Zhongshan saw the sales of nearly 16,300 homes with a combined area of 1.5 million square meters, up 92 percent and 76 percent, respectively, from the same month last year, according to a research report from Hopefluent Group Holdings Ltd., a real estate agency.

The average sales price was 7,408 yuan per square meter, a one-third increase from a year ago, the firm's data show.

"Ever since buyers from Shenzhen started pouring in, developers in Zhongshan have never had a problem with selling properties fast," said the report. "The only headache they are having now is how much prices should be raised."

(Rewritten by Wang Yuqian)