Shanghai's new home market saw sluggish sales last week as buyers adopted a “wait-and-see” sentiment while supply was almost “frozen,” according to latest market data.

The area of new homes sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 5.5 percent to 207,000 square meters during the seven-day period ended on Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released yesterday.

“While outlying areas continued to lead home sales, transaction volume in these areas suffered a major setback as a growing number of potential buyers decided to sit on the sideline for a while,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline.

Jiading and Songjiang districts as well as the Pudong New Area were the best performing areas by sales last week.

Meanwhile, only six homes totaling 979 square meters were released locally, following zero supply in the previous week, Centaline data showed.

Lu said “it could be pretty hard to see sales maintain their the current low level” with such a low supply released.

The average cost of new houses rallied notably despite the slack sentiment among home seekers and real estate developers.

New houses were sold at an average 46,224 yuan (US$6,825) per square meter last week due to projects targeting home upgraders rather than first-time buyers, Centaline data showed.

Four of the 10 best-selling projects cost 50,000 yuan per square meter and above.

“Tightening measures by the government to curb speculative demand have proved to be effective and no significant rebound in sales volume should be expected in the near future,” Lu said.

A housing project in Baoshan District was the most popular after buyers bought 135 apartments last week at an average 55,298 yuan per square meter.

(Source: shanghaidaily.com  Author: Cherry Cao)