“We do not believe that it would cause a serious problem, but if property prices fall some more, it won’t be the only sector that has problems,” he said.

Real estate difficulties pose a dilemma for China’s leaders because they coincide with a two-thirds drop in share prices on the Shanghai stock market since the market’s high last October. The two together could produce a negative effect, causing Chinese consumers to feel poorer and to reduce spending.

The most recent national data from the government shows that the average price for all residential and commercial real estate was 7 percent higher in July than a year earlier. But brokers across China say that within that period, prices peaked in many markets  either at the end of last year or at various times this year  and have slid since. The stocks of real estate developers have plunged, too. China Vanke, the country’s biggest publicly traded developer, reported on Tuesday that its sales had plummeted in August by 35 percent from a year earlier.

The real estate decline is affecting ordinary Chinese, too. Perhaps most consequential is the emerging view, apparent on blogs and in interviews, that apartments and houses, like shares on the declining Shanghai stock market, are no longer a certain path to prosperity.

Lin Bin, a 48-year-old insurance saleswoman who lives in Guangzhou, said the 1,000-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment she bought here in 2002 was still worth more than she paid in 2002. But she said she had lost two-thirds of the $4,400 she put into the stock market a year ago and worried that the housing market might be next.

“I’m not contemplating buying a second home as an investment because I hear that stock market and housing prices will continue to fall through next year,” she said while shopping recently.

Part of the problem is a severe credit squeeze. Through last winter, China’s central bank repeatedly raised the amount of capital it required Chinese commercial banks to deposit with it. The goal was to slow bank lending and control inflation. The commercial banks responded by continuing to lend to big corporate customers, most of them state-owned or at least state-controlled, while reining in other lending.