News Analysis As China’s real estate behemoth Evergrande, saddled with $300 billion in liabilities, dances ever closer to a default, questions about the health of the broader domestic property market have been thrown in sharp relief. Property and Economic Slowdown Recent data has confirmed Evergrande’s debt crisis has sent jitters through China’s property market. Home sales plummeted around 17 percent over the year to September, following last month’s 19.7 percent fall, according to recent data by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. “No one is buying new properties because they are getting afraid,” Helen Qiao, chief Greater China economist at Bank of America, told Bloomberg Television on Oct. 17. The slide in the property market is clearly having a broader effect on the economy. Recent data showed that China’s third-quarter economic growth came in lower than expected at 4.9 percent over the year, following the 7.9 percent increase in the second …