BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- China Evergrande Group, one of China's largest developers, said that its contracted property sales rose 34.2 percent to 500.96 billion yuan (about 77 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017.

Total floor area of property sold last year stood at 50.3 million square meters, up 19.2 percent from 2016, the company said in an unaudited report.

The average price of contracted sales was 9,960 yuan per square meter, up 12.6 percent from 2016, the report said.

The company set its target for contracted sales in 2018 at 550 billion yuan, up about 10 percent year on year.

The strong growth came amid slowing growth in the country's overall property sales area, which increased by 7.9 percent year on year in the first 11 months of 2017, down from 24.3 percent for the same period of 2016.

Last year, the housing market cooled as local governments toughened measures to rein in property speculation, especially in major cities.