Recovering sentiment sees increase in new house sales

New housing sales finally climbed above the 100,000-square-meter threshold in Shanghai last week amid recovering sentiment among both real estate developers and home buyers, the latest market data showed.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose 28.4 percent to some 101,000 square meters during the seven days to Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released on Monday.

"For the first time in four weeks, the transaction volume of new residential properties managed to exceed 100,000 square meters, mainly fueled by improved performances in several outlying areas," Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline said. "In addition, as new supply, particularly in the medium to low-end segment, also rebounded, we expect market momentum over the next two weeks to maintain that strength."

Citywide, remote Jiading District led the way with seven-day sales of about 18,000 square meters. Two other areas, including Pudong, also registered weekly sales of more than 10,000 square meters.

The average cost of a new home, meanwhile, increased 7.3 percent from a week earlier to 57,011 yuan (US$8,210) per square meter, according to Centaline data.

A residential project in Jiading with a price tag of 39,780 yuan per square meter sold 9,881 square meters, or 95 apartments, in total, making itself the most popular development of the week. It was followed by one medium to high-end project in Sanlin of Pudong, which registered sales of 4,955 square meters, or 53 units, at an average cost of 74,635 yuan per square meter, Centaline data showed.

Four of last week's top 10 best-selling projects sold for less than 40,000 yuan per square meter, with one asking for less than 30,000 yuan per square meter.

On the supply side, some 247,000 square meters of new houses spanning four projects were released onto the local market last week, with one in Dachang of Baoshan District introducing 154,000 square meters alone for sale, the most that has been launched in a single batch since the second half of this year.