(Yicai Global) Feb. 10 -- The secondhand housing market has rebounded in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen with viewings up since the lunar new year holiday, according to a recent survey by Securities Times. Newly available preowned homes and their listing prices have both climbed in Beijing and Shanghai.

Many prospective buyers visited homes for sale last weekend, realtors in Beijing’s Fengtai district told Securities Times. One said that in his area 10 homes sold at the weekend, whereas it used to take a month to sell that many. An agent in Haidian district said his company had sold more than 500 in a single day last weekend.

Compared with the January period before the Chinese New Year holiday, the number of buyers who looked around properties for sale jumped about 40 percent after the week-long break, with prices seeing a slight gain, said Xu Xiaole, chief analyst with Beike Research Institute.

An employee with a property agency in Shanghai said that her firm arranged 20 percent to 30 percent more viewings after the holiday than in the previous month.

On the first weekend after the holiday, real estate chain Lianjia’s trade surged 50 to 60 percent, with viewings up 30 to 40 percent, according to data from the Lianjia Research Institute Shanghai.

Both housing and customer transaction cycles have been shortened. In recent weeks, the housing transaction cycle dropped to 67 days from a previous high of 82 days, and the customer transaction cycle fell to 15 days from 28 days, according to the think tank.

The listed prices of preowned homes climbed, but transaction prices did not move greatly, according to some property agencies in Shanghai.

The number of potential buyers who came to see homes grew about 50 percent after the holiday, a realtor manager surnamed Huang in Luohu district, Shenzhen, told Securities Times, adding that the demand for rental housing had also climbed.

There have been signs of an uptick in the preowned home market in Shenzhen too since the holiday. Shenzhen had 560 second-hand homes on the market as of last week, soaring 215 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the Shenzhen Real Estate Intermediary Association.

House viewings in the city recently returned to the level seen in early December, said Xiao Xiaoping, head of Beike Research Institute Shenzhen.

Editor: Tom Litting