Weekly sales, prices rise in Shanghai home market

Shanghai's new home sales market strengthened for a third consecutive week with increases in both transaction area and average price, the latest market data show.

The total area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose 12.7 percent to around 195,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in its regular weekly report released on Monday.

Across the city, outlying areas continued to register vibrant sales, with several reaching above the 20,000-square-meter mark. In particular, Fengxian District outperformed again with transactions exceeding 30,000 square meters. Jiading District followed closely after selling some 29,000 square meters of new homes during the same period.

"Products in almost all price brackets recorded pretty good sales last week, with four projects securing over 100 units each in sales, indicating quite upbeat momentum in the market," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior research manager. "Ample new supply helped fend off traditional sluggish sentiment among buyers in January, which is a typical slow season for property sales."

The average price of a new home, meanwhile, climbed 7.4 percent from the previous week to 54,439 yuan (US$7,869) per square meter.

Half of last week's 10 best-selling developments cost more than 50,000 yuan per square meter, with the most expensive bearing a price tag of over 100,000 yuan per square meter, Centaline data show.

Citywide, one housing development in Jiading emerged as the most popular project after unloading 19,780 square meters, or 202 units, of new homes at an average cost of 53,355 yuan per square meter. Three other projects, located in former Nanhui District (now the Pudong New Area) and Fengxian, and costing between 20,000 yuan and 38,000 yuan per square meter on average, registered weekly sales between 120 and 160 units.

On the supply side, a total of 150,000 square meters of new residential properties were released into the local market, a week-over-week dive of 52 percent.

"Despite the retreat, it was still a normal-level weekly volume," Lu noted. "Besides, new home supply so far this month has already reached some 450,000 square meters, which is very strong when compared with that of January 2019, which reached 350,000 square meters in total for the entire month."