New home buying in Shanghai continues to pick up
New home buying momentum continued to pick up in Shanghai last week, with medium to high-end properties being the most sought-after, the latest market data showed.
The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, jumped 74.4 percent from a week earlier to about 177,000 square meters during the seven days to Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released on Monday.
"Last week's transaction, the highest in eight weeks, was partly helped by the month-end effect, as many real estate developers choose to gear up during the last few days of a month to have a better looking performance," Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline said. "However, it remains hard to say whether the current strength might be maintained for another week, as it was mainly fuelled by a single project which recorded extremely good sales of nearly 500 units during the week-long period."
Across the city, Baoshan District led with some 64,000 square meters sold, far outperforming the runner-up, outlying Jiading District, where some 18,000 square meters of new houses were sold. Three other districts, including the Pudong New Area, also registered weekly sales of more than 10,000 square meters, Centaline data showed.
The average cost of a new home rose 2.3 percent from a week earlier to 58,330 yuan (US$8,420) per square meter.
Notably, the most popular project of the week, located in Baoshan with a price tag of 56,281 yuan per square meter, sold 56,548 square meters, or 498 units, in total.
It was trailed by one medium to low-end project in Jiading, which registered sales of 11,376 square meters, or 82 units, at an average cost of 40,567 yuan per square meter, Centaline data showed.
Half of last week's top 10 best-selling projects sold for more than 80,000 yuan per square meter, with one asking for over 100,000 yuan per square meter.
On the supply side, some 325,000 square meters of new houses spanning nine projects were released onto the local market, a week-over-week increase of 31.7 percent.
One project in Lingang of Pudong, targeting mainly first-time buyers with lower budgets, launched some 72,000 square meters for sale alone, the highest among all developments, according to Centaline.