Home buyers in Shanghai return after the holiday

Home buying sentiment started to recover in Shanghai after the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, latest market data showed.

The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 69.8 percent to 26,000 square meters during the seven-day period ending on Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released today.

Citywide, outlying districts of Chongming and Jiading remained key drivers of the growth while some of their downtown counterparts continued to register zero sales."

The Shanghai housing market will continue to gain momentum in the next few weeks despite a rather moderate pace as we've anticipated," said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline.?"The reason why we don't expect a significant rebound anytime soon is because the market will most likely stay cautious until some clear signals from the government are sent," Lu said.

Such signals are expected to have impact over many major real estate policies to be introduced in March.
The average cost of new homes fell 7.2 percent from the previous week to 38,613 yuan (US$6,101) per square meter, probably the lowest weekly price in more than a year, according to Centaline data.

A residential project developed by Tahoe Group on Changxing Island in Chongming District remained the most sought-after development after selling 6,141 square meters, or 61 units, for an average price of around 28,000 yuan per square meter.?Only one out of the 10 best-selling projects cost more than 50,000 yuan per square meter while two stayed below the 30,000-yuan-per-square-meter threshold, Centaline data showed.

On the supply side, some 48,000 square meters of new homes at two projects in Jing'an and Jiading districts were released to the local market last week. One of them, located in downtown Jiangning Road precinct, introduced a total of 164 apartments on Saturday with average price ranging between 61,000 yuan and 101,000 yuan per square meter.

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