Shanghai new home sales climb to 11-week high

Sales of new homes rose to an 11-week high in Shanghai last week amid robust buying in the mid to low-end segments.

The purchases of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, jumped over 10 percent from the previous week to 285,600 square meters during the seven-day period ended on Sunday, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said in a report released yesterday.

"If such momentum continues to extend, the transaction volume for September will very likely exceed 1.2 million square meters, which would be similar to the volume recorded in the same month a year ago," said Lu Qilin, a Deovolente researcher.

Meanwhile the average price of a new home fell 6.6 percent week on week to 23,720 yuan (US$3,876) per square meter due to a "rather lackluster sales registered in the high-end sector," Lu said.

But new homes costing no more than 20,000 yuan a square meter accounted for 53 percent of the total transactions, up from 46.8 percent registered during the previous week, Deovolente data showed.

Citywide, a Citic project in outlying Jiading District became the best-selling development last week when it sold 150 units for an average price of 16,865 yuan per square meter.

Around 168,500 square meters of new houses entered the local market, a weekly drop of 37.4 percent, data showed.