SEOUL, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's unsold homes fell for the sixth successive month as local builders refrained from new home construction amid the faltering housing market, government data showed Tuesday.

The number of unsold homes nationwide came in at 61,811 at the end of August, down 2.0 percent from a month earlier, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The country's unsold houses began to grow from about 14,000 in late 2021 due to higher borrowing costs, but the number remained downward for the sixth month amid a lower supply of new homes.

The country's central bank had left its policy rate unchanged at 3.50 percent since January, after increasing it by 3.0 percentage points for the past one and a half years.

The number of unsold homes in the capital Seoul and its surrounding metropolitan area, in which about half of the country's population resides, retreated 13.1 percent from a month earlier to 7,676 at the end of August.

The number in other areas shrank 0.2 percent to 54,135 in the cited month.

For the first eight months of this year, the number of housing permits was 212,757, down 38.8 percent compared to the same period of last year.

The number of housing starts tumbled 56.4 percent to 113,892 in the eight-month period across the country.

The number of housing transactions stood at 374,356 during the January-August period, down 2.9 percent from a year earlier.