New home purchases climbed in Shanghai last week amid steadily improving sentiment among buyers.

Sales of new homes, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, rose 2.7 percent from a week earlier to 213,500 square meters, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said in a report released yesterday.

"The weekly transaction volume of new residential properties has been hovering around 200,000 square meters in the city for five straight weeks, an indicator the market is starting to recover," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Deovolente. "The luxury segment saw robust sales as well, a further sign of an overall pickup."

Buyers paid an average of 23,546 yuan (US$3,725) per square meter for the new homes last week, a weekly rise of 1.3 percent.

Thirty-three new homes, each costing over 50,000 yuan a square meter, were sold last week across the city, up from 30 units registered in the previous week. Among that, eight homes had a price tag of more than 100,000 yuan per square meter, according to Deovolente.

On the supply side, more than 224,000 square meters of new houses were released to the market, staying above the 200,000-square-meter level for the third straight week.

Between June 1 and Sunday, new home sales totaled 698,000 square meters in Shanghai, an increase of 21 percent from the same period a month earlier.

"June will very likely surpass May in transaction volume if the current pace of sales is maintained during the last few days of the month," said Huang Hetao, research manager with Century 21 China Real Estate, operator of the city's biggest estate chain in terms of outlet numbers. "An increasing number of home seekers with a wish to upgrade their accommodation standards have been entering the market and that has helped trigger sales of mid to high-end properties."

Sales of new houses costing more than 30,000 yuan a square meter accounted for about 12 percent of the city's total new home sales in March, and they rose to some 15 percent in June as of Sunday, Century 21 data showed.