The ongoing recovery in the housing market saw landed home sales surge in the first 10 months of 2017 as landed property prices fell to attractive levels from their Q3 2013 peak, reported Business Times.
Between January and October, the number of landed homes sold stood at 1,513 units, up 50 percent from the 1,009 units moved over the same period last year.
Based on Savills Singapore’s analysis of caveats data from URA Realis data, the value of transactions rose 41.1 percent from $4.3 billion to $6.1 billion.
The preliminary figure for the period have also surpassed the result for the full-year 2016 at 1,187 units, sold at $5.1 billion.
The hike in transaction comes as landed residential properties registered a bigger price drop compared to non-landed private homes over 15 quarters before prices increased in Q3, said Savills Singapore research head, Alan Cheong.
He noted that the narrowed price difference between the two categories improved the attractiveness of landed homes.
Notably, URA’s price index for landed homes fell 16 percent between Q4 2013 and Q2 2017, while its non-landed private home price index contracted by only 10.2 percent.
“To some extent, buyers seem to have returned to the market with a vengeance, with sentiment buoyed by all the positive news about overall sales volume, record land prices, the influx of en bloc millionaires seeking replacement homes and improvements in the economy,” said Knight Frank Singapore executive director of residential sales and leasing Tay Kah Poh.
Cheong believes demand for landed properties in Singapore is “partly aspirational” as owning a landed home is still ranked high within the hierarchy of housing wants of Singaporeans.
Moreover, the overextended downturn in the property cycle has “unbottled pent-up demand for those wanting to buy a landed home”, he said.
This article was edited by Keshia Faculin.
