The rebound in buying sentiment helped boost purchases of new homes in Shanghai last week, with mid to high-class projects dominating the top three best sellers, market data showed yesterday.

The sales of new residential properties, excluding government-funded affordable housing, rose 8.7 percent weekly to 174,600 meters over seven days ended Sunday, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said. The average price jumped 17.8 percent to 25,675 yuan (US$4,088) per square meter, extending gains for the fourth straight week.

"Two of the city's top three best-selling projects costing more than 50,000 yuan a square meter helped push the weekly average price to the highest since February," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Deovolente.

A total of 61 new homes costing more than 50,000 yuan per square meter were sold last week, with a villa project in Sanlin, Pudong New Area, selling 47 units alone, the best across the city, according to Deovolente.

Meanwhile, the city saw a supply of new homes totaling more than 280,000 square meters at 13 projects during the past seven days, a weekly surge of 140 percent.

"The weekly supply was the highest in about 14 weeks," said Huang Hetao, a research manager at major estate chain Century 21 China Real Estate. "And most developers are still adopting a strategy to release homes more frequently while at the same time offering a small number of units at one time hoping to trigger buying sentiment."

Only four projects last week launched more than 30,000 square meters for sale, Century 21 data showed.

Between March 1 and Sunday, nearly 600,000 square meters of new homes were transacted in the city, up from 403,000 square meters during the same period of a month earlier, Lu said
 

Source:china.org.cn