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The Resilience of the Private Property Market persevered under heavy economic headwinds.

Latest Property Real Estate News - Published on 23/01/2020

The Resilience of the Private Property Market persevered under heavy economic headwinds.

4Q 2019 URA / HDB Real Estate Statistics

Private New Home Sales Volume

A total of 2,443 number of private new homes were sold for the last quarter of 2019. Bringing the total volume for 2019 to 9,912 units. This reflects a 12.7% (y-o-y) overall surge in the number of units sold as compared to 2018, which had 8,795 units transacted.


Chief Executive Officer of PropNex Realty, Mr Ismail Gafoor highlighted that “The Singapore property scene has demonstrated resilience despite global uncertainties, with investors and upgraders taking advantage of rightly priced developments. As the new launch sales segment has brought a new lease of life for developers as they moved a total of 9,912 in 2019. This is a 12.7% increment (y-o-y). Additionally, the overall unsold units (Excluding ECs), dropped from 34,824 in 2018 to 30,162 units sold in 2019. This reflected a 13.4% (y-o-y) drop.”


Mr.Ismail further stated that “Our data shows that more than 50% of the new launch sales in 2019 was contributed by projects that were launched in prior years. This was a result of lower land bid prices undertaken by developers. This allowed developers to adopt attractive prices to attract buyers and investors. We expect a similar trend in 2020, with developments that are already launched in 2019 and earlier taking the lion share. Hence, potentially reaching the 9,000 to 10,000 mark in 2020.”

Private Resale Volume


2,342 private resale units were sold in the final quarter of 2019. This has brought the total for 2019 to 8,949 units. A 31.2% (y-o-y) overall drop as compared to 2018, when there were 13,009 transactions.


Mr. Ismail mentioned that “The cooling measures had a greater impact on the resale market with the overall volume contracting at 31.2% (y-o-y) and registering a total of 8,949 resale transactions in 2019. However, looking at a quarterly basis, the private resale market rebounded from the lower volume immediately after the property cooling measures to a stable demand of over 2,300 units in the last 3 quarters. Resale property prices are generally 10 to 20% lower as compared to some of the newer launches and we expect the resale volume to cross the 10,000 mark in 2020.

Private Home Prices


Mr. Ismail highlighted that “The cooling measures introduced in July 2018 have led to a moderation in the prices of the private residential property market, resulting in a 2.7% growth in 2019. With the positive demand, we expect private property market to continue to rise at moderate levels to 2 to 3% in 2020 as well.”

PUBLIC HOUSING:

A total of 6,339 HDB resale transactions occurred in the last quarter of 2019. This brings the total for 2019 to be 23,714. This is a 2.7% (Y-o-Y) overall increase as compared to 2018, which recorded 23,099 HDB resale transactions. The HDB resale flat prices had a overall price change of 0.1% in 2019.

Mr. Ismail stated that “HDB resale prices achieved an overall positive growth of 0.1% after 7 years of price decline. We expect overall HDB resale demand to be propelled in 2020, with a projected 24,163 HDB flats reaching MOP and the enhanced housing grant announced in September last year.”


Mr. Ismail predicts that HDB resale volume is likely hit the 25,000 mark and prices are expected to grow between 1 to 2%.