New home sales rebound on stronger supply

New home sales rebounded in Shanghai last week amid recovering supply with medium- to low-end projects continuing to be the most sought-after type, latest market data shows.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 14.6 percent from a week earlier to 107,000 square meters, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said on Monday.

Citywide, outlying Jiading District registered the largest volume — about 21,000 square meters, a week-over-week surge of 62 percent. It was followed by Qingpu District.

New homes sold for about 46,659 yuan (US$7,057) a square meter, a week-on-week increase of 5.7 percent, Centaline said.

“Medium- and low-end developments continued to dominate the sales market with seven out of the 10 best-selling projects priced at no more than 35,000 yuan per square meter,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline.

“However, the most popular project still failed to register weekly sales of more than 100 units, evidence of continued lackluster momentum among home buyers.”

A residential project in Lingang port area sold 89 apartments for an average 24,516 yuan per square meter last week, the most among its counterparts. It was trailed by a development in Baoshan, where 44 units were sold for an average 53,392 yuan a square meter.

About 150,000 square meters of new residential properties were released on the market, compared with zero the previous week.

“As supply rebounds, sales of new homes may possibly climb as well in the last week of this month,” Lu said. “ But overall performance in September has definitely failed to meet market expectations mainly because of the extremely inadequate supply.”

As of Sunday, only 215,000 square meters of new homes has been launched for sale, compared with 400,000 square meters during the same period a year ago, Centaline said.