SHENZHEN, China (Caixin Online) — A rainstorm that flooded roads in Shenzhen last Saturday did not stop some 4,000 people from lining up in front of the sales office of a residential community in Longhua District that had just started taking orders.

The buyers snapped up more than 700 apartments — the most expensive ones cost more than 40,000 yuan ($6,500) per square meter — in less than two hours, the developer said.

A similar scene occurred at six other developments that also opened for business over the weekend, underscoring the strength of the rebound seen in the southern city’s housing market since the central government relaxed property-related policies in September and again in March.

In recent months, the prices for new apartments in Longhua District — near Hong Kong and home to many IT companies — have soared from around 28,000 yuan to about 40,000 yuan per square meter, analysts familiar with the Shenzhen market said.

The market for second-hand apartments has also recovered.

In April, Shenzhen was the only one of the country’s top 10 cities to see prices for new apartments higher than in the same month last year, according to data from the China Index Academy, which tracks real-estate prices in 100 cities. Its new-home prices increased by 1.09% year-on-year last month.

The data also show the city’s price for second-hand homes increased by 6% from April last year. The growth rate beat those for the other nine cities.

Analysts say the change was partly caused by the government’s efforts to stimulate demand. A policy started in September made it easier for people to buy a second home and asked banks to cut the interest rates on mortgage loans to as low as 70% of the central bank’s benchmark level. Another in March reduced the requirement for down payments for many buyers.

Data from the China Index Academy show that Shenzhen’s average home price has increased for eight straight months, starting in September.

Analysts say the demand for homes in Shenzhen has far outstripped supply because not enough homes have been built over the past few months.

From January to April, only 7 homes were available for every 10 buyers, said Shen Xiaoling, an analyst from the research center at China Real Estate Information Corp., a property market information provider.

In April, the amount of new commercial and residential space for sale in Shenzhen was only slightly more than 3 million square meters, according to a report by Citic Securities. The figures for Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, a coastal city, were 10.2 million, 12.7 million and 12.2 million square meters, respectively.

The report also said Shenzhen’s second-hand homes sold much faster than new homes in the past two months, an indication that developers did not have much stock.

As of May 10, Shenzhen had about 34,300 new homes for sale, data from Worldunion, a real-estate-market service provider, showed. Based on the current speed of sales, it would take only eight months — compared with 12 to 14 months for the other big cities — for all those homes to be sold out, the firm said.

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