New housing market rebounds

Shanghai’s new housing market rebounded moderately last week despite an overall sluggish sentiment, latest market data showed.

The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 28.1 percent to 175,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released yesterday.

Outlying Nanhui in the Pudong New Area outperformed all districts with weekly sales of 56,000 square meters amid an abundant supply. That was in sharp contrast with its downtown counterparts where most sold no more than 3,000 square meters.

“Despite the recovery, the general buying momentum was still rather low even though September is the traditional strong month for property sales,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline. “However, as new home supply rebounded as well, we could expect sales to improve during the last week of this month.”

The average cost of a new home fell again to 48,678 yuan (US$7,081) per square meter, a weekly drop of 4.5 percent and the lowest in about two months, according to Centaline data.

Three of the top four most sought-after projects cost under 30,000 yuan per square meter, with a residential development in Nanhui leading with weekly sales of 43,983 square meters, or 462 units, for an average 25,845 yuan per square meter.

The high-end segment saw three housing projects in downtown Yangpu, Huangpu and Putuo districts each asking for over 100,000 yuan per square meter, while units in another development in Zhabei sold for above 95,000 yuan per square meter each.

Around 168,000 square meters of new homes spanning five projects, mostly in the medium to low-end segment, were released locally, up 16.5 percent week over week, Centaline data showed.