A continued cooling sentiment caused new home sales in Shanghai to fall below the 200,000-square-meter threshold for the first time in four weeks, while the average selling price fell 3 percent week on week.

The sales of new homes, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, dropped 10.9 percent from a week earlier to 198,100 square meters during the seven-day period ended on Sunday, according to a report released yesterday by Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co.

They were sold for an average 24,488 yuan (US$4,051) per square meter, a drop of 3 percent from a week earlier.

"It is within our expectations that momentum has finally eased following robust sales between September and November," said Huang Zhijian, chief analyst at Uwin.

"As the lunar new year is approaching, the weekly sales of new homes would probably hover around 200,000 square meters over the coming few weeks with overall transactions for January likely to hit 900,000 square meters," he said.

The sales will mark a slight retreat from December when nearly 980,000 square meters of new houses were sold, Huang added.

Meanwhile, 196,400 square meters of new homes were released locally for sale last week, a week-on-week decline of 3.3 percent, Uwin data showed.