Surging developer sales point to further property market recovery

View of private homes in Singapore.

UPDATED: Sales of new private homes in Singapore, including executive condominium (EC) units, almost doubled to 2,086 units in July from 1,064 units in the previous month, data released on Tuesday (15 August) by the Urban Redevelopment Authority showed.

For the first seven months of 2017, developers sold 7,147 private units and 3,004 ECs, up 50 percent and 11.4 percent from the same period last year respectively.

According to analysts, this is further proof that the property market is on the road to recovery.

“Likely, potential buyers have come to terms with the prevailing cooling measures, and recent information that a possible turn of the market in terms of pricing is here may have pushed pen to paper,” said Desmond Sim, Head, CBRE Research, Singapore and South East Asia.

Eugene Lim, Key Executive Officer at ERA Realty Network, shares a similar view. “Buyers are anticipating the market recovery to happen in 2018, and choosing to make their purchase now in hopes of catching the market on its upswing,” he said.

He also feels that the revised Seller’s Stamp Duty rule introduced in March, which reduced the holding period from four to three years, has made new projects a very attractive option for home buyers.

The best-selling project last month was Hundred Palms Residences EC at Yio Chu Kang Road, which sold all 531 units within seven hours of its launch at a median price of $843 psf.

This was followed by the 450-unit Martin Modern condominium in Robertson Quay, which moved 109 out of the 120 units released at a median price of $2,152 psf.

Previously launched projects also reported good sales, with The Santorini, Symphony Suites and iNz Residence selling 82, 73 and 65 units respectively.

CBRE’s Sim noted that the higher sales volume in July comes off the back of a marginal 0.1 percent quarterly price decline in Q2 2017 – the smallest drop seen in 15 quarters.

Looking ahead, Lim expects developers to capitalise on rising demand by launching their units in phases. These include recently launched projects such as Park Place Residences at Paya Lebar Quarter, Martin Modern and Le Quest in Bukit Batok.

For the whole of 2017, ERA predicts total developer sales to be in the range of 10,000 to 12,000 units and EC sales of 3,500 to 4,000 units.

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg