(Yicai) Oct. 22 -- Property sales by area soared 64 percent in Shanghai last month, following the release of new policy measures aimed at bolstering the city’s real estate market.

By area, sales of homes, office buildings, and shops in Shanghai rose to 1.7 million square meters in September from the prior month, the city’s statistics bureau revealed today. Home sales surged 73 percent to 1.3 million sqm.

In the nine months ended Sept. 31, 12 million sqm of property was sold, down 0.3 percent from a year earlier, including a 3.8 percent drop in home sales to 9.6 million sqm, while investment in real estate development picked up, climbing 2.2 percent year on year.

Shanghai rolled out a six-point package of measures to support the property market on Aug. 25. They included lifting the upper limit on the number of homes a single family can buy in areas beyond the Outer Ring Road and an increase in the cap on individual housing provident fund loans. The two homes purchase limit for families within the Outer Ring Road was kept.

Following the policy package, pre-owned home sales hit a four-year high. Some 20,389 properties changed hands last month, a 28 percent year-on-year increase, according to data from real estate agency Anjuke.

The recovery showed up in land sales too. In the recent eighth tranche of land auctions this year, six plots sold for nearly CNY20 billion (USD2.8 billion) in total, with a riverside parcel in Xuhui setting a record for the core urban district of CNY148,500 (USD20,848) per sqm.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Tom Litting