HOME buying sentiment continued to rebound in Shanghai and fueled a 27 percent weekly surge in sales of new homes last week, Soufun.com said yesterday.
Sales of new homes totaled 302,000 square meters during the seven days through Sunday in Shanghai, posting an annual growth rate of 121.9 percent.
However, the average price per square meter was 21,820 yuan, down 1.9 percent from the previous week and 4.7-percent drop from a year ago, according to Soufun.
It was the second time that weekly sales have surpassed 300,000 square meters in Shanghai this year, following sales of 352,000 square meters weekly in June.
Tang Zhengwei, analyst with Soufun Shanghai, said that the sales of houses "in December will probably hit a new record in 2012."
Until Sunday, Shanghai posted sales of 800,000 square meters for the month, which means December sales look likely to exceed 1 million square meters and probably surpass June sales of 1.02 million square meters, according to Tang.
Pudong New Area accounted for 20 percent of the city's total sales last week at 64,000 square meters.
Sales of villas jumped 45.5 percent week on week to 29,372 square meters last week.