Markets have welcomed the central bank's latest interest rate cut, a move analysts said Sunday will help to stabilize economic growth in several areas, such as boosting home sales and reducing financing costs for businesses.

The People's Bank of China (PBC) cut the one-year benchmark lending rate by 40 basis points to 5.6 percent on Friday, and lowered the one-year benchmark deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.75 percent. The interest rate cut was to take effect from Saturday, the PBC said in a statement Friday.

"The lending rate cut will bolster the property market in the short term," Zhang Hongwei, research director at Shanghai-based property consultancy ToSpur, told the Global Times via e-mail Sunday.

Zhang said home sales are likely to rebound in the next few months, because the reduced cost of housing loans will attract more homebuyers.

Jia Ningfang, a 30-year-old white-collar worker, who is planning to buy an apartment in Beijing with a budget of around 3 million yuan ($489,000), said the rate cut will help by reducing her borrowing costs.

Jia plans to buy an apartment with a 20-year adjustable-rate mortgage from a commercial bank for a total loan of 1 million yuan in January.

"The monthly mortgage payments for me will be about 230 yuan less than the amount before the interest rate cut," Jia said.

The interest rate on loans of more than five years for people who purchase apartments by using the public housing provident fund will be reduced by 0.25 percentage points to 4.25 percent, the Beijing housing provident fund management center said Saturday.

Despite the stimulus measures and the short-term boost for the property market, in the long term the issue of oversupply in the market, especially in second- and third-tier cities, "will still be a factor," said Zhang of ToSpur.

In addition to the property sector, "the stock market will benefit from the central bank's move," Li Daxiao, director of research with Shenzhen-based Yingda Securities Co, told the Global Times Sunday.

The move will also help "to ease the downward pressure on the economy, and reduce financing costs for firms," Liu Dongliang, a senior analyst at China Merchants Bank, told the Global Times via e-mail Sunday.

China has set a 7.5 percent growth target for the year, but the country's top leaders have also stressed publicly that they could tolerate slower growth as long as the job market is stable.

The country's GDP grew by 7.3 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, the weakest pace of growth in more than five years, official data showed.

In addition to the interest rate cut, the PBC said it would allow banks to pay depositors a maximum of 1.2 times the benchmark rate, up from the previous ceiling of 1.1 times, a move Liu said was part of the effort to offer more market-oriented interest rates.

To attract deposits, Chinese commercial banks on Saturday started to adjust their deposit and lending rates, according to analysis of their statements and announcements by the Xinhua News Agency.

Some mid-sized banks including Industrial Bank, China Minsheng Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank offered deposit rates of 3.025 percent, about 1.1 times the benchmark rate of 2.75 percent.

Deposit rates at smaller banks like Bank of Ningbo and Bank of Nanjing, which have fewer branches but face bigger pressure to attract deposits, are even higher at 3.3 percent, 1.2 times the benchmark, according to Xinhua.

Meanwhile, deposit rates at the nation's five biggest State-owned banks - Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications - are 3 percent, around 1.09 times the benchmark rate.

Although Chinese banks are expected to face shrinking net interest margins in the wake of the central bank's latest rate cut, they are still likely to benefit from the move in the long run, Wang Tao, head of China Economic Research at UBS Securities, said in a research note e-mailed to the Global Times late Friday.

"Interest rate cuts will reduce the debt servicing burden and improve corporate cash flow and balance sheets, which should help to slow the formation of nonperforming loans and reduce overall financial risk," Wang explained.