Category Archives: Property Market / Real Estate

BREAKING NEWS: 80% monthly rise in April home sales

Sales of new private homes climbed more than 80 percent during April 2015 from last month’s figure to reach 1,124 units, excluding Executive Condominiums (ECs), according to data released by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) at lunchtime today.

Comparing month-on-month data, there was a 83 percent increase in sales of new private homes in Singapore from April’s tally of 613 units (692 units including ECs). Year-on-year there was a healthy 47 percent rise compared with the same month in 2014 when 762 units were sold.

A total of 1,124 new private homes were sold during April 2015 by Singapore property developers. Including ECs the figure was 1,218 units.

The most expensive unit sold last month, at S$2,636 per sq ft, was one unit at V On Shenton, while the highest number of sales took place at North Park Residences which saw 486 transactions at a median price of S$1.374 per sq ft.

In a statement published last month, URA revealed that developers launched 1,189 uncompleted private residential units (excluding ECs) for sale during the first quarter of 2015, lower than the 1,592 units that were launched during the fourth quarter of 2014.

The statement also noted that developers sold 1,311 private residential units (excluding ECs) during the first quarter of 2015, a decline from the 1,376 units sold during the fourth quarter of 2014.

Excluding ECs, Singapore was home to 6,530 launched but unsold new private home units at the end of March 2015.

In April 2015 developers launched a total of 1,344 new private homes for sale, according to the URA data.

According to URA, prices, as well as the number of units sold during the month, are based on Options to Purchase (OTPs) issued by developers and reported to URA. Not all OTPs result in confirmed sales.

An OTP is a right or option given by the vendor to an intending purchaser to buy the property at a specified price within a specified period – the validity period of the option. The intending purchaser must pay a booking fee of between 5 percent and 10 percent of the agreed price for this right or option. The purchaser has to exercise the OTP within its validity period to buy the property.

Because OTPs change daily, the number of units sold by developers also changes on a daily basis.

https://www.ura.gov.sg/realEstateIIWeb/price/search.action

Luxury prices fell 12.6% y-o-y in Q1

Prices of luxury residential property in Singapore were noted as being the worst performing of the 35 global cities monitored by real estate firm Knight Frank in its latest Prime Global Cities Index.

Luxury prices in the city-state fell 12.6 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to a year ago.

Quarter-on-quarter, prime residential prices dropped 3.7 percent in Q1 2015 from the previous three-month period.

The property cooling measures have hit Singapore’s high-end residential sector the most, revealed Knight Frank’s 2015 Wealth Report published in March.

Alice Tan, research head for Knight Frank Singapore said at the time, “This may be a good time for the UHNWIs (ultra-high-net-worth individuals) to re-look at luxury residential homes here, because we believe if the government relaxes the cooling measure for this segment of the market, the recovery could be evident.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco topped the list with the highest annual price growth of 14.3 percent. This was followed by Bengaluru (India) and Miami which saw prices grow 13.6 percent and 12.2 percent on year respectively.

Knight Frank considers prime property as the top five percent of the wider residential housing market in each city it surveys.