BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- China's real estate investment increased 11.8 percent year on year in the first quarter of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday.

The growth was faster than the 11.6 percent expansion recorded in the first two months.

The total property investment in the first quarter amounted to 2.380 trillion yuan (about 354.7 billion U.S. dollars), with 72.5 percent used in residential buildings, the NBS said.

In the January-March period, the investment in residential buildings went up 17.3 percent year on year to 1.726 trillion yuan, according to the NBS.

During the same period, China's real state developers built buildings of 6.99 billion square meters in floor area, an increase of 8.2 percent year on year.

Commercial housing sales measured by floor area came in at 298 million square meters in the first quarter, down 0.9 percent year on year, with the sales in value exceeding 2.7 trillion yuan, up 5.6 percent from a year earlier.