NEW home supply more than doubled in Shanghai last week as real estate developers hurried to capitalize ahead of the annual slack season, market data showed.

About 388,000 square meters of new residential properties, excluding government-subsidized affordable housing, were released across the city at 11 developments during the seven day period ended Sunday, a week-on-week surge of 118 percent, Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co said today.

"It was the third time in four weeks that seven-day supply exceeded 310,000 square meters, an indication developers have been ambitiously trying to boost sales before July and August, a period when sales slow due to the really hot weather," said Huang Zhijian, chief analyst at Uwin.

Purchases of new homes rose 18.3 percent in Shanghai last week to 227,700 square meters with the average cost falling 4.5 percent from a week earlier to 23,401 yuan (US$3,805) per square meter. The decline in average price was attributed to sluggish sales in the high-end segment, Uwin data showed.

New residential properties costing more than 40,000 yuan a square meter dropped 23 percent from the previous week to a little over 20,000 square meters, according to Uwin research.

Across the city, a housing project in outlying Maqiao, Minhang District, took the crown of the most-popular development for the week after selling 551 apartments for an average price of 17,787 yuan per square meter.

A China Overseas Property development in Zhabei District and a Greenland project in New Jiangwan Town, Yangpu District, were among last week's top 10 best-selling projects. The development in Zhabei was asking for more than 38,000 yuan per square meter while the one in Yangpu was asking for about 42,000 yuan per square meter.