Shanghai new home sales pick up in latest week

New home sales rebounded in Shanghai last week, with outlying areas in general outperforming their better located counterparts, the latest market data show.

The total area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, jumped 15.1 percent week over week to around 102,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a regular weekly report released on Monday.

Citywide, Songjiang District registered sales of some 13,000 square meters, making it the most popular among home seekers. The Nanhui region of the Pudong New Area followed most closely after unloading about 11,000 square meters of new homes during same period. Jiading District came third with weekly transaction of 9,788 square meters.

These new homes sold for an average price of 59,536 yuan (US$8,432) per square meter, a week-over-week decrease of 7.6 percent according to Centaline data.

"The major reason behind the generally weak recovery that we've seen over the past few weeks is limited new supply," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior researcher. "From buyers' perspective, however, their momentum has almost come back to normal, as we can see from the number of people recently at the sales offices of several developments around the city."

Topping all in sales last week was a project in rural Songjiang District which sold 2,959 square meters, or 29 apartments, for an average price of 39,500 yuan per square meter. A Greenland project in Dongjiadu, Huangpu District, which was the bestseller during the previous seven-day period, fell to the second spot after unloading 2,893 square meters, or 17 units, for an average cost of 143,965 yuan per square meter.

By price point, five of the 10 bestselling projects cost 80,000 yuan per square meter or more, with two of them standing above the 100,000-yuan-per-square-meter barrier. The remaining five developments all sold for less than 47,000 yuan per square meter.

On the supply side, 3,078 square meters of new homes at one project were launched into the local market last week, compared with zero during the previous week, according to Centaline data.