Weekly turnover tumbles in Shanghai housing market

New home sales fell below the 200,000-square-meter mark in Shanghai last week, although sentiment remained strong among home buyers for medium-end properties, the latest market data showed.

The total area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 31.2 percent week over week to around 194,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending Sunday, terminating a five-week rally, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co showed in a regular report released on Monday.

Around the city, the suburban Nanhui region of the Pudong New Area led all with weekly transactions of 30,000 square meters. It was most closely trailed by Minhang District and Songjiang District, where some 29,000 square meters and 24,000 square meters of new houses were sold, respectively, during the same period.

The average price of new homes stood at 59,256 yuan (US$8,323) per square meter, a decrease of 16.5 percent from the previous week.

"It was still a normal weekly volume despite the rather significant retreat," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior researcher. "Notably, medium-end apartments replaced luxury homes to become the most sought-after properties over the past week, indicating a strong rebound in demand from first-time upgraders."

A China Vanke project in Minhang outperformed all after unloading 17,568 square meters, or 135 units, for an average price of 47,936 yuan per square meter. Two developments, one in Songjiang and the other in Nanhui, both selling for between 50,000 yuan and 60,000 yuan per square meter, followed immediately with weekly transactions of 94 and 53 units, respectively.

Luxury projects with price tags over 100,000 yuan per square meter, meanwhile, continued to take three spots in the bestseller list, though with lower rankings compared with the previous week. One project in downtown Xuhui District unloaded 40 units at an average cost of 101,442 yuan per square meter. The other two, one in the Pudong New Area and the other in Minhang, jointly sold less than 20 units.

By price point, four of the 10 bestselling projects cost less than 50,000 yuan per square meter and none of the remaining three exceeded 62,000 yuan per square meter.

On the supply side, a total of 160,000 square meters of new homes spanning five projects were released into the local market, an increase of 1.7 percent from the previous seven-day period, according to Centaline data.