Nearly 90 percent of Chinese families own their houses or flats, a figure much higher than the world level, which stands at about 60 percent, according to a report issued by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and the People's Bank of China on Sunday.

According to interviews with nearly 4,000 urban families, 85.4 percent of them own their homes. The rate of home ownership is even higher in rural areas, reaching 94.6 percent, according to the report.

Each urban household owns 1.22 apartments on average, higher than the number of 0.74 released by China International Capital Corporation in 2010.