BEIJING, May 11 -- Housing prices rose 12.8 percent in April from a year earlier in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday. That was 1.1 percentage points higher than March's housing price rise.

Prices of new houses rose 15.4 percent from the same month last year in April, 1.2 percentage points higer than the rise of March.

Notably, newly-built housing prices in Haikou of Hainan province skyrocketed 64.3 percent year-on-year, followed by Sanya's 58.2 percent and Wenzhou's 26.1 percent.

Prices of existing homes in the major cities advanced 10.5 percent year on year in April, the NBS said.

Sanya, the second largest city in Hainan, saw its existing home sale prices rise 48.8 percent year on year, the most for any city, the statement added.