Shanghai notches another week of strong new-home sales

New-home sales in Shanghai stayed above the 200,000-square-meter threshold for another week as outlying areas continued to register strong performances.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose 1.7 percent to around 209,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in its regular weekly report, released on Monday.

Across the city, the former Nanhui District, now part of the Pudong New Area, led all with transactions totalling 31,000 square meters. It was most immediately followed by Songjiang and Qingpu districts, where some 27,000 square meters and 25,000 square meters of new houses were sold, respectively.

"Notably, low- to medium-end residential properties in remote areas accounted for half of the top 10 most popular projects, which was quite rare," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior research manager. "Meanwhile, not a single high-end development managed to get onto the list, which was also uncommon."

Four projects on the best-selling list had price tags of less than 30,000 yuan (US$4,278) per square meter, including the most sought-after development located in Qingpu, which sold 8,809 square meters, or 74 units, of new homes for an average price of 28,103 yuan per square meter, according to Centaline data.

The average price of a new home fell 4 percent from a week earlier to 50,357 yuan per square meter.

On the supply side, about 117,000 square meters of new houses, spanning four projects, were launched across the city, a week-over-week drop of 45.8 percent, Centaline data showed.