New home sales shoot up in May

New private home sales in Singapore almost doubled month-on-month in May to record 1,470 units, according to latest data by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).

Including executive condominiums (ECs), the number of units sold increased to 1,528 units last month from just 797 in April.

However, compared to May 2013 when 1,912 units including ECs were sold, the year-on-year decline is 20 percent.

Meanwhile, 1,790 new private homes were launched to buyers in May, approximately three times more than the 600 units released in the month before.

“The sudden flurry of launches could be due to developers timing their launches just before June school holidays and World Cup, when many buyers go on holidays, or get distracted by soccer matches, thus putting off their housing purchases,” revealed an OrangeTee report.

According to JLL, most of the buying activity took place in the Outside Central Region (OCR), accounting for 64 percent of sales, while the Rest of Central Region (RCR) and Core Central Region (CCR) accounted for 34 percent and two percent respectively.

The best-selling project last month was Coco Palms in the OCR, which sold 590 units at a median price of $1,018 psf. This was followed by Commonwealth Towers (RCR) which moved 275 homes at $1,626 psf, while The Panorama (OCR) found buyers for 100 units at $1,241 psf after developer Wheelock Properties relaunched the condominium at a discount.

Alice Tan, Head of Research at Knight Frank Singapore, said sales of units in the three developments constituted about 65.6 percent of total new sales volume.

Desmond Sim, Head, CBRE Research, Singapore, noted that there is an underlying demand for housing and newly launched projects with attractive attributes will sell.

“To date, some 3,963 new homes have been sold in the first five months of the year. In the absence of more mass market launches, we envisage that the whole year’s take-up will be in the region of 8,000-9,000 units,” said Sim.

Source : PropGuru

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