Savills still upbeat on outlook over private condo prices

Despite the latest property curbs, Savills senior director Alan Cheong expects private home prices in Singapore to rise by 10 percent to 12 percent for the whole of 2018, and 5.0 percent to 10 percent next year.

He attributes the bullish prospects on several factors. “There is still a great deal of pent-up household liquidity in the market. Housing prices remain affordable based on liquid assets/household. Property prices today have not outpaced the income growth since 2013,” said Cheong during a recent investor group luncheon hosted by RHBInvest.

Moreover, buyers’ interest in new private condos has been sustained even after the introduction of the new curbs, unlike in June 2013 when demand for such properties “collapsed” after the imposition of the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR).

More: See our Step-by-Step Guide To Buying A Condo

However, Cheong believes that the government is unlikely to relax the cooling measures in the near term as out of the overall 26 interventions it has made to rein in property prices, only six favoured the market.

While en bloc sales activity is expected to decline due to the new property curbs, this could lead to developers offering higher prices for state land from 2H 2019 and onwards if the supply of such land released to the market remains low, he added.

More: Estimate your maximum property affordability with our Affordability Calculator

On the other hand, RHBInvest analyst Vijay Natarajan believes that growth of private condo prices will be flat for the second half of this year, while 2019 could record small annual gains of up to 2.0 percent.

Eugenia Rosaline Shlaen edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories, email eugenia@propertyguru.com.sg