Weekly new home sales dive 50% in Shanghai

New home sales in Shanghai plunged nearly 50 percent last week from the previous seven-day period, according to latest market data.

Sales of new homes, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, dropped 49.6 percent to 163,000 square meters last week, Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co said in a report released yesterday.

"It was a sharp contrast to what was registered in December, which was the most robust month in 2014 in terms of sales," said Huang Zhijian, chief analyst at Uwin.

"If this slack momentum continues, then the monthly volume of January will be less than half of what was achieved in December last year."

As of Sunday, 228,900 square meters of new homes were sold this month in the city. That compared with 1.37 million square meters sold in December, according to Uwin.

Meanwhile, new homes were sold last week at an average 26,820 yuan (US$4,321) per square meter, a week-on-week drop of 11.7 percent, Uwin data showed.

Shanghai saw the release of about 168,100 square meters of new houses last week, little changed from the previous week, according to Uwin data.