HOME buying sentiment rose in Shanghai for the fourth consecutive week despite a slower pace with projects in outlying areas continuously outperforming their counterparts in
urban locations.
The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 3.4 percent to 129,000 square meters last week, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co
said in a report released today.
These new homes sold for an average 48,327 yuan (US$6,995) per square meter, an increase of 12.3 percent from the previous week, a result of structural shift.
Remote Qingpu and Songjiang districts registered the largest seven-day transaction volume of 21,000 square meters and 19,000 square meters, respectively, Centaline data showed.
"Last week's rebound was rather weak, partly because no new projects, or new batches of existing developments, were launched across the city during the weekend," said Lu Wenxi,
senior manager of research at Centaline. "We expect new home sales to grow further in the coming weeks as supply continues to increase but the pace might remain moderate as it
still takes some time for the prevalent 'wait-and-see' momentum to dissipate."
Citywide, a high-end project in Sanlin, Pudong New Area, sold 60 apartments last week for an average cost of 87,427 yuan per square meter, making itself the most sought-after
development. It was closely followed by a medium and low-end project in Baoshan, which unloaded 51 units at an average price of 34,527 yuan per square meter.
On the supply side, a total of 149,000 square meters of new residential properties were released to the local market, a week-over-week surge of 278 percent. The majority of them
are located in remote areas of Songjiang, Qingpu and Jiading districts, according to Centaline data.
