NEW home sales continued to hover around 160,000 square meters in Shanghai for the fourth consecutive week while robust sales of high-end projects pushed up the average price to above 23,000 yuan (US$3,538) per square meter.

Sales of new homes, excluding those built under the city's affordable housing programs, fell 3.5 percent to 161,100 square meters last week, according to a research released yesterday by Shanghai Deovolente Realty. The new homes were sold for an average of 23,464 yuan per square meter, a weekly increase of 16.8 percent.

"Buying sentiment has yet to be triggered as real estate developers still remain firm on their prices even after sales remained sluggish for more than three months," said Lu Qilin, research head at Deovolente. "On the other hand, rather good sales at luxury developments lifted average prices during the same period."

Sales were sealed at three residential projects with an average price of more than 100,000 yuan per square meter, including Shui On's Casa Lakeville in Xintiandi and China Resources' the Bound of Bund, last week while several developments priced from 50,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan per square meter also won over some buyers, Deovolente data showed.

A separate report released yesterday by the city's statistics bureau showed that new home sales, excluding affordable housing but including those built for relocated residents under the city's urbanization programs, climbed 9.3 percent to 1.21 million square meters last month.