BEIJING -- China Vanke, the country's largest property developer by market value, saw its profit growth in the third quarter of 2014 much slower than that for the same period last year, new data showed.

Net profits edged up 2.8 percent year on year to 1.65 billion yuan (about $268 million) in the third quarter, the company said Sunday in a report filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The growth was sharply down from a 18.39-percent surge in the third quarter last year.

Profits in the first nine months rose 4.84 percent, down from 5.55 percent in the first half and 21.27 percent in the first nine months of 2013, the report showed.

Total revenue in the first three quarters declined 0.43 percent from a year earlier to 63.14 billion yuan, while the basic earnings per share rose 4.78 percent year on year to 0.59 yuan per share during the same period.

Vanke noted in the report that property market in China continued a period of cooling down since the beginning of the year.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that commercial housing sales in term of floor space dropped 8.6 percent in the first nine months, widening by 0.3 percentage point from the first eight months.

Prices for new homes in 69 out of 70 major Chinese cities tracked by the bureau dropped month on month in September, compared with 68 cities in August.

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