Shanghai's new home sales market ended last year by jumping 55 percent from 2014 as easing mortgage curbs and continuing cuts in both interest rates and banks' reserve requirement ratios fueled demand from buyers.
The area of new houses sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, exceeded 15 million square meters in the city last year, Shanghai Homelink Real Estate Agency Co said in a report released yesterday. The new homes were sold for an average 32,174 yuan ($4,923) per square meter, a year-on-year rise of 18.1 percent.
"New home transactions climbed 26 percent further from November to over 1.88 million square meters in December, making it not only the most in 2015 but also the highest monthly volume recorded in Shanghai since the second half of 2009, beating earlier market expectations," said Ke Xiaojuan, a researcher at Shanghai Homelink.
"The average cost of new homes also stayed well above the 30,000 yuan per square meter threshold, despite an insignificant monthly retreat," he added.
New homes sold across Shanghai last month cost an average 33,562 yuan per square meter, down 3.4 percent from November. Meanwhile, 959,000 square meters of new houses were released to the local market, up 7.3 percent from November, Homelink data showed.
Robust sales have cut the city's inventory of new homes to below 10.7 million square meters from 11.5 million square meters of new houses available for sale at the end of November.
Tomson Riviera in Lujiazui of the Pudong New Area was the most costly project last year after five apartments were sold for 702 million yuan over the past 12 months, or 214,401 yuan per square meter on average, according to Homelink data.
