Seven-day sales of new homes remained below the 100,000-square-meter threshold for the seventh straight week in Shanghai despite a double-digit rebound, according to market data released yesterday.
The area of new homes sold, excluding government-funded affordable housing, totaled 83,000 square meters during the period ended Sunday, up 13.2 percent week over week, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report.
"The market was plagued by zero supply again last week with real estate developers showing no interest in launching their projects onto the market," said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline. "We expect new home sales to remain slack over the coming weeks amid extremely insufficient supply."
Outlying areas continued to outperform their centrally located counterparts. Nanhui in Pudong New Area recorded new housing sales of 11,000 square meters last week, down 15.4 percent from the previous week. In contrast, central districts such as Hongkou and former Luwan, where inventories are much smaller, both suffered zero transaction during the same period.
One project in Nanhui, which sold 34 units of apartments totaling 4,865 square meters, became the most sought-after development. A luxury villa project in Pudong, which just sold five units totaling 1,646 square meters, still managed to grab the 7th position in last week's Top 10 list, Centaline data showed.
On average, new homes sold for an average 49,054 yuan (US$7,381) per square meter, almost unchanged from a week ago.
From October 1 through Sunday, only two residential projects released a total of around 50 units onto the local market, the majority of them large-sized units, a separate report released yesterday by Shanghai Homelink Real Estate Agency Co showed.
