An investment arm of Australia's Macquarie Group Ltd has slashed prices by about a third from levels quoted nine months ago for one of its top-end Shanghai properties, underlining the difficulties investors face exiting China's cooling real estate market.

The residential development is being put on the block with a price tag of around 300 million yuan, according to sources with direct knowledge of the plan.

Macquarie is trying to sell City Apartments, a 16,000-sq m residential development in downtown Shanghai, which the Australian bank fully acquired in 2005, the sources said.