Housing sales in major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou failed to rebound during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, as homebuyers bet on further price cuts following last year's sluggish performance.

In Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, home sales from January 25 to 31 fell by 20 percent from last year's lunar New Year holiday, the Guangzhou-based Nangfang Daily reported.

"The real estate market was particularly dismal during this year's Spring Festival," Huang Tao, head of Guangzhou's Centaline, a leading real estate agency in China, told Xinhua.

"It was rare for developers to completely shut down, however, a third of housing projects were closed over the past week," Huang said.

Property developers in Beijing tried to lure buyers with sales promotions and discounts of up to 1 million yuan (US$146,284) for some apartments, but failed to produce results.

Developer enthusiasm was ignited by measures that included lifting restrictions on foreigner purchases of real estate.

"More people came to check out on the apartments starting Thursday," a salesperson surnamed Jin at a real estate project in Beijing told Beijing Youth Daily.

Jin said that visits increased by about 40 percent every day over the past week than on normal days. "Yet, they were not actually buying homes, but were enquiring discounts," Jin said.

"Prices will continue to go down, and we won't rush to buy apartments right now," a Beijinger surnamed Zhang at the real estate project told the newspaper.

The just-browsing attitude was also shared by prospective homebuyers in Shanghai. Only 24 apartments, with a total area of 1990-square meters, were sold in two days, Wednesday and Thursday, and many projects reported zero sales, according to Fangdi (www.fangdi.com.cn), an online information provider under Shanghai Real Estate Trading Center.

In January, more than 500,000 square meters of apartments were sold in Shanghai, according to Fangdi.

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2009)