Tag Archives: Real Estate Facts & Figures

Smaller homes take lion’s share of sales

Posted on 14 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Smaller homes take lion’s share of sales

Home-seekers have gotten hungrier for apartments in recent months but have yet to work up a hearty appetite for large units.

Across many property launches, studio apartments and two-bedders
remain most popular, reflecting continued price sensitivity on the buyers’
part. They are generally ’still not as ambitious’, says DMG & Partners property analyst Brandon Lee.

At NTUC Choice Homes’ Trevista in Toa Payoh where 550 units have been launched, the majority of units left are three and four-bedders. Many buyers went straight for the two-bedroom units when the project’s preview began some two weeks ago.

GuocoLand saw the same trend when it launched Sophia Residence in the Dhoby Ghaut area. ‘All one and two-bedders were snapped up as soon as they were launched,’ says a GuocoLand spokesman. The project also has three and four-bedroom units.

Anecdotal evidence also points to a preference for smaller homes at projects such as Viva and Ascentia Sky. In another instance, the 70-unit Airstream at St Michael’s Road – where most units measured 625 sq ft in size or smaller – sold out last month.

Aiding the trend, some developers caught sight of homeseekers’ shrinking pockets as the downturn came and reconfigured their projects to offer a bigger number of smaller units. Continue reading →

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Preventing a property market bubble

Posted on 5 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Preventing a property market bubble

THAT the government is sending a second signal in the space of two months that it is watching developments in the property market underscores its unease over the current real estate boom. And this time, the government has upped the ante a notch, after the earlier caution appeared to have made little impact on the market.

On Wednesday, Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan said that there is a ‘definite possibility’ that the government will re-introduce land sales through its confirmed list system from next year – thus increasing the potential supply of homes – and that it was ‘a question of how much we put on the confirmed list’. Sale of state land under the confirmed list was suspended for the first half 2009 Government Land Sales Programme to help stave off oversupply risk as the property market here was then on a downtrend. This came after Mr Mah warned earlier in late July that speculation was trickling back into the property market. The government was watching the situation closely, he said then, and will take action should the market overheat. But that seemed to have made little impression on sentiment, and was followed by several ‘hot’ property launches where queues formed and units were snapped up immediately. Continue reading →

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Posted in Property Market / Real Estate, Property Price

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