PropertyGuru.com.sg
Despite a 3.7 percent growth in the economy in 2013, Singapore's residential property market failed to regain momentum in Q4 last year, according to a Savills report.
For the whole year, new private home sales plunged 32.7 percent year-on-year to 14,948 units, while the number of resale and subsale private homes fell by 51 percent year-on-year.
The slowdown was mainly due to various cooling measures introduced by the government, particularly the Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD) and the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) framework.
The report also noted that the quarterly price index for private residential properties fell 0.9 percent in Q4 2013; its first decline since Q1 2012.
Specifically, price declines were seen in the Core Central Region (CCR) and Outside Central Region (OCR) at 2.1 and 1.0 percent respectively.
The average price of high-end non-landed homes monitored by Savills also softened by 0.8 percent quarter-on-quarter.
As a result, suggestions to relax some of the cooling measures have been raised to reduce the risk of impairing market sentiment.
However, Savills believes that it may be "premature for any such actions to be taken, as many mass-market and mid-tier projects are in the hands of financially strong developers who are unlikely to lower prices below comparable benchmarks just to clear their stock".
Moving forward, Savills expects overall prices of private residential properties to increase by two percent this year.
Christopher Chitty, Senior Content Producer at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him and this or other stories, email christopher@propertyguru.com.sg
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