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

The purchases of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, jumped 48.4 percent from the previous week to 338,000 square meters during the seven-day period ended Sunday, the highest weekly volume registered since April, Shanghai Deovolente Realty Co said yesterday in a report.

As of Sunday, Shanghai reported about 829,000 square meters of new homes had been sold so far this month, and the figure is expected to exceed 1 million, Lu predicted.

"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 arrival of the traditional slack months of July and August," said Lu Qilin, a researcher at Deovolente. "Notably, robust sales of mid- to high-end housing projects were seen, which also pushed up the average price of new homes."

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

So far this year, Shanghai's monthly transaction volume of new homes exceeded one million in January and March, with the latter seeing over 1.53 million square meters of housing sold.

Meanwhile, over 193,000 square meters of new houses were released locally last week, a weekly plunge of 50 percent.