Wendy Zhang/ Shanghai Daily news

The soaring prices of presale properties in Shanghai seem to cool off, with the average price during the first nine months this year, increasing by 7.7 percent as compared to the previous year when the proportion hit 19.2 percent, today's Shanghai Morning Post reported.
However, some new problems have arisen in the local real estate market.
After operating for more than half a year, online property trading is still far from satisfactory, said an industry analyst. Prospective buyers often complain that the property projects advertised for sale on the Internet are normally unavailable. This accounts for 70-80 percent of the disputes concerning online property trading.
Some developers have already received deposits from buyers, but haven't signed the respective contracts with them via the Internet. This leads to disputes, the analyst said. However, some developers establish 'firewalls' to prevent a buying spree. For example, they offer the reference price of 10,000 yuan (US$1,200) per square meter on the Internet, but actually sell the property at only 7,000 yuan.