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Home buying mood rebounds mildly

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 20, 2016 - 14:38

Shanghai housing market saw a mild rebound in home buying sentiment last week as medium to low-end projects sold robustly, according to latest market data.

The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 14.2 percent from a week earlier to nearly 150,000 square meters, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released yesterday.

The average cost of new homes, however, dropped 4.6 percent week on week to 38,852 yuan (US$5,590) per square meter, the lowest weekly price since August, Centaline data showed.

“Residential projects targeting first-time buyers were very popular last week, with half of the 10 best-selling developments asking for no more than 30,000 yuan per square meter, which was quite rare,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline.

A development in Lingang New City, a port area in Shanghai, sold 275 apartments last week, the most among all projects. Units in the project, available only for certain buyers, were priced at 8,957 yuan per square meter. Another project in outlying Jiading District sold 72 units for 8,127 yuan per square meter on average last week, the data showed.



Meanwhile, about 101,000 square meters of new homes, mostly in suburban areas, were released locally, down 41.6 percent from the previous week.

“Developers are usually not so keen to launch their projects during the year-end period which is a traditional low season for property sales,” Lu said.

He said tighter measures imposed by the local government as well as an earlier-than-usual Spring Festival in 2017 might also have hit their sentiment.