The government is unlikely to relax property cooling measures any time soon, judging from Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s views that there is “some distance to go in achieving a meaningful correction.”
According to media reports, Mr Tharman said, “If we do not get a meaningful reversal after each upswing, property prices will run ahead of the growth of household incomes over the long term, which we should avoid,”
Speaking at Credit Counselling Singapore’s 10th anniversary lunch on 28 October, he noted there has been some correction in prices for private property prices as well as HDB resale prices over the last four to five quarters.
This is after property market in Singapore saw a sharp run-up in recent years.
“We can never get rid of cycles in the property market, with the upswings in some years being followed by corrections. Our cooling measures cannot eliminate the cycle, but they aim to temper it,” Mr Tharman said.
“What this means is avoiding a bubble during the upswing and allowing for a correction in prices subsequently.”
Muneerah Bee, Senior Journalist at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact her about this or other stories email muneerah@propertyguru.com.sg
