Singapore’s private home prices rose 15.8% in the third quarter, the most in 28 years, as cheap money and improving economic conditions lured buyers.
The price index of private residential property jumped to 154.3 from 133.3 the previous quarter, the Urban Redevelopment Authority said on its Web site today. The increase was the first in more than a year and the biggest quarter-on-quarter gain since March 1981, according to the authority.
“Asset values were knocked down considerably in the global financial crisis and nervous investors pulled out of the market,” Chris Fossick, South East Asia managing director for Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., said in a phone interview. “But unlike the U.K. and U.S., where people were overstretched and had way too high debt levels, in Asia that wasn’t the case.”
Singapore marked its biggest private residential sale in two years yesterday near the main Orchard Road shopping strip. The government raised its forecast for economic growth this month, and Moody’s Investors Service today reiterated the city- state’s top grade Aaa rating, noting Singapore’s “very high economic resilience and robust government finances” derived in part from its high per-capita income.
Singapore’s overnight interbank rate, the rate at which banks lend to each other, is 0.25%, down from 2% in January 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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Gains were most pronounced for non-landed properties in the quarter. Continue reading
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