By Romesh Navaratnarajah: Singapore recorded a stronger than expected month for new private home sales in December 2012, with 1,410 units sold last month.
This is a 30 percent increase from the previous month which saw 1,087 private homes sold, and a whopping 123 percent hike compared to a year ago when residential property sales were affected by the additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) announced in December 2011.
Including executive condominiums (ECs) the sales volume shot up 78 percent month-on-month to reach 2,259 units.
Meanwhile, developers launched 2,225 new homes in December compared to just 773 in November.
Of that total, 1,214 EC units were launched in the month, of which 70 percent were sold. CityLife@Tampines and The Topiary were the most popular EC projects, selling 452 and 288 units respectively.
Three private condominium projects also saw good take-up rates. Echelon, d'Leedon and Eco Sanctuary sold 331, 170 and 103 units, with median psf prices of S$1,768, S$1,441 and S$1,100 respectively.
For the whole of 2012, developers sold 27,229 private homes (including ECs), a 41 percent increase from the 19,306 units sold in 2011.
PropertyGuru's International Group Editor Andrew Batt said: "The strong sales figures for December validates the latest slew of cooling measures introduced by the government last Friday. Clearly there was substantial demand for property last month which is traditionally seen as a quiet time for home buying activity here." Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor of PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@allproperty.com.sg Related Stories: Singapore cooling: Your views
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