Shanghai new home market cooled last week amid a sharp drop in sales and supply, according to latest market data, although an analyst suggested the transaction volume was “not bad for this time of the year.”
The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable Shanghai housing, sank 25.1 percent week on week to 310,500 square meters, the lowest in five weeks, Shanghai Homelink Real Estate Agency Co said in a report released yesterday. The new homes were sold at an average 36,459 yuan (US$5,547) per square meter, up 3.2 percent from the previous seven-day period.
“Despite the drop, the weekly transaction volume of new houses still managed to stay above the 300,000-square-meter threshold, which was not bad for this time of the year,” said Ke Xiaojuan, a researcher at Shanghai Homelink.
“Real estate developers, meanwhile, seemed not very ambitious to launch projects now as the Spring Festival is just less than one month away,” Ke continued.
New homes totaling 129,500 square meters at four projects were released to the local market last week, a 49.2 percent plunge from the previous week, according to Homelink data.
However, robust sentiment was registered in the medium to high-end segment as more luxury units were sold over the past week, which brought the average price to an 11-week high.
Sales of new homes priced at 50,000 yuan per square meter totaled 391 units during the seven-day period ended on Sunday, an increase of 29 units from a week earlier.
