MACAO, May 18 (Xinhua) -- A total of 1,850 building units and parking spaces were purchased and sold in the first quarter as per stamp duty record in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), and the total value of transactions was 10.55 billion patacas, down 20.3 percent and 25.5 percent respectively quarter-on-quarter, the SAR's statistics service said on Saturday.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated the purchase and sale of residential units decreased 377 quarter-on-quarter to 1,379 units, and the total value fell 26.5 percent to 8.32 billion patacas.

With respect to the average price per square meter of usable area, the overall average price of residential units decreased 4.8 percent quarter-on-quarter to 102,576 patacas.

The average price per square meter of the existing residential units dropped 1.5 percent quarter-on-quarter to 96,235 patacas.

Meanwhile, the average price per square of pre-sale residential units meter decreased 10.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to 131,768 patacas.

As for the construction of the private sector, there were 14,572 residential units in the design stage, of which 7,394 were under construction and 258 were under inspection at the end of the first quarter. (1 U.S. dollar equals to 8.07 patacas)