New home transactions fall despite recovering supply
New home transactions fell below the 100,000-square-meter threshold for the first time in four weeks despite continuously recovering supply, the latest market data showed.
The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, plunged 44.3 percent to 69,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending on Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released today.
Citywide, outlying Nanhui in Pudong New Area doubled its weekly sales to around 18,000 square meters, the most among its counterparts. It was immediately trailed by Qingpu, where some 14,000 square meters of new houses were sold, a week-over-week drop of 30 percent.
The average cost of new houses fell 9 percent from the previous week to 47,498 yuan (US$7,313) per square meter, mainly due to a structural shift. Seven of the 10 most sought-after projects cost no more than 50,000 yuan per square meter, according to Centaline data.
A residential project in Nanhui's Lingang port area managed to sell 116 apartments alone for an average price of 24,559 yuan per square meter, making it the most popular project of the week. A development in Qingpu trailed closely behind with seven-day sales hitting 89 units at an average cost of 42,838 yuan per square meter.
Notably, two projects costing more than 100,000 yuan per square meter managed to squeeze into the top 10 list though they only sold eight and two units, respectively, according to Centaline data.
On the supply side, about 96,000 square meters of new homes were released to the local market last week, a weekly surge of 21.3 percent.
"It was the highest weekly supply since the fourth quarter of 2017, and those in the low to medium-end categories remained the mainstream products," said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Shanghai Centaline. "Looking forward, as supply continues to rebound, buying sentiment might improve as well over the next couple of weeks as the Spring Festival holiday won't fall until the middle of next month."
