A steadily improving sentiment among buyers fueled new home purchases in Shanghai last week, an industry report showed yesterday.

The 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 of the continued strength of recovery in the market," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Deovolente.

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

Lu also said: "Sales were robust in the luxury segment, a further sign of an overall pickup."

Thirty-three new homes costing more than 50,000 yuan a square meter each were sold last week in the city, up from 30 units in the previous week. Of that, eight homes cost above 100,000 yuan per square meter each, according to the report.

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