NEW home sales rose to a nearly three-month high in Shanghai last week and the unexpected surge might put June's overall volume well above 1 million square meters for only the third time this year.

The purchases of new residential properties, excluding government-funded affordable housing, jumped 48 percent from the previous week to 338,000 square meters during the seven-day period ended on Sunday, the highest weekly volume registered since April, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said today in a report.

"As the first half is coming to an end, real estate developers have been launching more promotional campaigns over the past month to boost sales before the traditional slack months of July and August," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Deovolente. "Notably, mid- to high-end housing projects saw particularly robust sales, which also pushed up the average price of new homes."

The average cost of a new home climbed to 24,824 yuan (US$4,016) per square meter, up 6 percent from the previous week.

Seventy-five luxury homes with a price tag of more than 50,000 yuan a square meter were sold across the city last week, up 45 from the previous seven-day period, while half of the city's top 10 best-selling projects asked for more than 30,000 yuan a square meter, according to Deovolente data.

On the supply side, more than 193,000 square meters of new houses were released to the market last week, a weekly plunge of 50 percent.

As of Sunday, about 829,000 square meters of new homes had been sold in the city so far this month, and the figure should exceed 1 million, Lu predicted.

This year, Shanghai's monthly transaction volume of new homes exceeded 1 million square meters in January and March, with the latter seeing more than 1.53 million square meters of properties sold.