New home sales jump, but trapped below 100,000 square mater benchmark

NEW home sales remained below the 100,000-square-meter threshold for the fourth consecutive week in Shanghai despite a double-digit recovery, data released on Monday showed.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 12.7 percent to 97,000 square meters last week, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in its latest report.

Outlying Qingpu District outperformed its rivals, with 16,000 square meters selling in the seven days, a week on week surge of 45.5 percent.

Jiading District and Nanhui in Pudong New Area also recorded strong sales — 10,000 square meters each.

“The local new home sales market will remain sluggish because of continuing insufficient supply — less than 10,000 square meters so far this month,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Shanghai Centaline.

“Some projects that sold just 10 units a week were still able to make into the top 10 list, evidence for extremely slack market momentum,” Lu added.

Across the city, only one project released new units last week, adding a total of less than 7,400 square meters to new housing stock and terminating a zero supply that had plagued the local market for three straight weeks, Centaline data showed.

New homes sold for an average 50,290 yuan (US$7,553) per square meter last week, an increase of 5.4 percent from the previous seven-day period.

Nanhui registered weekly sales of 38 apartments totaling 3,646 square meters, the most across the city. Seven of the 10 most popular projects cost between 40,000 yuan per square meter and 60,000 yuan per square meter while the other three developments all sold for no more than 40,000 yuan per square meter.