Chinanews, Shanghai, Oct. 11 –During the weeklong National Day holiday, many Shanghai people went to the local housing trade fairs. From the transaction information, it can be seen now that 70% of the transactions go to houses whose selling prices are below 10,000 yuan per square meter, while those houses whose selling prices are between 5,000 and 8,000 yuan per square meter are most welcomed. In general, Shanghainese prefer to spend less than one million yuan to buy a whole apartment to live in.

 

Holiday housing trade fairs are usually considered as an accurate barometer of the property market. The transactions completed during the National Day holiday seemed to send a clear signal that wage earners in Shanghai like to budget their expenses according to their income and the money they usually spend on buying a house will not exceed the one-million-yuan mark.

 

Statistics show that some 120,000 local residents visited the four-day housing trade fair held during the National Day holiday. However, in the end, only 267 houses were sold, 70% of which were sold at a selling price below 10,000 yuan per square meter. At the trade fair, most people gathered in front of the exhibition booths where houses were sold less than 10,000 yuan per square meter. For those luxury houses whose prices were above 20,000 yuan per square meter, the customers visiting these booths were even fewer than the number of the salespeople.

 

At present, the middle class group that earn an annual salary of about 100,000 yuan are increasing in Shanghai. Most of them work in public institutions or state-owned enterprises. However, many of them say they would like to keep their housing expenditure below one million yuan. For one thing, these people are not willing to shoulder a heavy financial burden from buying a house. For another, they would like to allocate some extra money for cars, travel, education, investment or leisure activities. As a result, most people in Shanghai now prefer to buy a house costing less than one million yuan.