A chilly wind may blow at this year's Shanghai Spring property exhibition which has seen the number of developers taking part fall by over 75 percent from last year's as the central government's property measures take effect.

Forty-five real estate developers showing off about 1,000 home projects will participate at this year's show, according to property website, www.soufun.com. In 2010, more than 200 developers and 130,000 home buyers attended the exhibition.

Most big-name developers, including Vanke, Greenland and Forte, will be absent at the four-day show which opens at the Shanghai Exhibition Center on Thursday, the website said.

"Our business has suffered due to the government's new round of tightening measures," said Zhang Xiaohu, a local real estate agent. He said he is not surprised that attendance at this year's property show by developers has cooled.

Since January, the central government has raised the down payment to buy a home, limited the number of homes a person can buy, imposed higher interest rates and even trailed a pilot property tax in a bid to cool soaring prices of homes.

At this year's show, two-thirds of the newly launched home projects are in Shanghai, with about 40 percent of the developments sited in suburban Baoshan and Jiading districts. The remaining projects are located away from the city in nearby provinces.

Meanwhile a soufun.com survey has found that the main topics of discussions among buyers concerned home prices and projects discounts.

New home sales plunged to the lowest in more than five years in Shanghai last month, with the biggest decline in volume occurring in the downtown area.

Sales of new homes, excluding those built under the city's affordable programs, tumbled 83 percent from January to 178,000 square meters in February, the lowest since 2006, Shanghai Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co said.

The average price fell 10 percent to 20,625 yuan (US$3,139) per square meter amid sluggish sales of high-end projects, Uwin data showed.

Meanwhile, sales of existing homes also plunged more than 60 percent in February in the city as buyers were deterred by the latest government measures to ban home buying.