New home buyers remained elusive last week

New home buying sentiment continued to decline in Shanghai last week despite a major rebound in supply, the latest market data suggested.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 16.3 percent to 71,000 square meters during the seven-day period ended Sunday, staying below the 100,000-square-meter threshold for the tenth consecutive week, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released today.

"Outlying Songjiang and Qingpu districts remained the two areas where weekly transaction reached 10,000 square meters though both of them suffered two-digit retreats from the previous week," Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Shanghai Centaline said. "Notably, Yangpu District joined former Jing'an and Luwan to become the latest victim with nil sales due to extremely insufficient supply in downtown areas."

New housing sales in Qingpu dropped 26.7 percent week on week to 11,000 square meters, while in Songjiang, transactions fell 16.7 percent to around 10,000 square meters.

The average cost of new homes shed two percent to 48,761 yuan (US$7,353) per square meter. 

Among the 10 best-selling projects, two sold for more than 100,000 yuan per square meter and seven fell into the range of between 30,000 yuan and 40,000 yuan per square meter.

Citywide, a residential development in remote Fengxian District emerged as the most sought-after project after selling 50 units, or 4,805 square meters, at an average price of 37,159 yuan per square meter. A villa project in Changning District which sold just two units totaling 1,164 square meters managed to get into the top 10 list with a No.9 spot.

On the supply side, some 72,000 square meters of new residential properties spanning two projects were released on the local market last week, the most registered so far in the fourth quarter.

"New home transaction volume would probably remain below the 100,000-square-meter threshold during the last three weeks of 2017 amid continuously sluggish sentiment," Lu said. 

"For instance, only 90 buyers showed up at the sales office of a project in Zhoukang, Pudong New Area, which recently introduced a batch of 204 units into the market."