Shanghai: Home sales soar despite drop in new supply

New home sales rebounded in Shanghai last week despite a drop in new supply, the latest market data showed.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 21.5 percent to around 177,000 square meters in the seven days to Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in its weekly report.

Across the city, nine districts managed to register more than 10,000 square meters in weekly transaction volume, most of them in outlying areas. Qingpu remained the most sought-after district for another week, with some 25,000 square meters of new homes sold. Songjiang followed with 21,000 square meters, a week-over-week increase of 31.2 percent. The Pudong New Area saw its volume rose 15.4 percent to around 15,000 square meters.

Citywide, the average cost of a new home edged up 2 percent to 55,560 yuan ($8,057) per square meter, according to Centaline data.

"Though medium to high-end projects dominated the top 10 list, robust sales of a low-end development in Jinshan kept the average price little changed from a week earlier," said Lu Wenxi, Centaline's senior research manager.

Six of the top 10 projects in terms of transaction area sold for more than 50,000 yuan per square meter, with four of them costing over 90,000 yuan per square meter.

Outperforming all was one development in remote Jinshan, which unloaded 7,949 square meters, or 155 apartments during the seven-day period for 11,940 yuan per square meter. It was closely followed by a project in downtown of Jing'an, which recorded sales of 6,798 square meters, or 43 units.