Amid sales stumble, signs of strength in Shanghai new housing market

Despite a monthly tumble in sales, Shanghai's new home market continued to show signs of strength in October.

By area, the volume of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 13.6 percent from a month earlier to 957,000 square meters, according to a regular monthly report released on Monday by Shanghai Centaline Property Consultancy Co.

"It was still a strong performance, and the third-highest volume recorded so far this year," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior research manager. "On a year-on-year basis, that represented a surge of 78 percent."

The average price of a new home, meanwhile, slipped 1 percent to 53,755 yuan (US$8,028) per square meter, mainly due to strong sales in the medium to low-end segment.

Citywide, Nanhui, a former district and now part of the Pudong New Area, as well as outlying Qingpu and Songjiang districts, outperformed with monthly transactions of around 100,000 square meters and above.

In the top-10 list by sales, seven projects cost less than 50,000 yuan per square meter with two selling for no more than 25,000 yuan per square meter, according to Centaline data.

Surpassing all was a development in Nanhui, which unloaded 53,271 square meters, or 641 apartments, at an average price of around 23,400 yuan per square meter. Two projects in Qingpu, costing over 51,000 yuan and 61,000 yuan per square meter, respectively, followed with sales of 178 units and 211 units.

On the supply side, some 767,000 square meters of new housing, the majority being medium to low-end properties, were launched into the local market last month, a decrease of 33.4 percent from September, according to Centaline data.