Shanghai housing market down after 3-week rally
NEW home sales in Shanghai retreated last week despite a surge in fresh supply, ending a three-week rally and dragging the transaction volume below the 100,000-square-meter threshold again.
The area of new residential properties sold, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, fell 22.9 percent to 94,000 square meters during the sevenday period ending Sunday, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Co said in a report released yesterday.
Outlying districts including Jiading, Qingpu and Songjiang performed well. In Jiading new home transactions rose 20 percent from the previous week to around 18,000 square meters, while Qingpu and Songjiang both registered weekly sales exceeding 10,000 square meters.
The average cost of a new home dropped 16.6 percent from the previous week to 49,203 yuan (US$7,321) per square meter, Centaline said.
Citywide, a housing project in Jiading became the most popular development last week after selling 8,344 square meters, or 81 units, for an average price of 51,729 yuan per square meter.
“After rebounding for three consecutive weeks, the city’s new housing market just lost its steam somehow and recorded a major setback,” said Lu Wenxi, senior manager of research at Centaline. “However, we should probably expect a notable rebound very soon mainly due to a significant improvement in supply.”
About 406,000 square meters of new homes spanning six projects, most of them medium to low-end developments with price tags of between 30,000 yuan and 60,000 yuan per square meter, were launched onto the market for sale last week, a week-over-week jump of 570 percent — the highest in 12 weeks.
A separate report released by Shanghai Homelink Real Estate Agency Co showed that new home supply is set to reach some 5,100 units this month, the highest this year after April.
Such abundant new supply might help monthly transactions exceed 4,000 units again in July, and boost performance further through August, according to Homelink forecasts.