The price increase signals positive market sentiment for private housing.
UPDATED: Private home prices continued to rise in the last quarter of 2017 by 0.7 percent, revealed latest flash estimates of the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) price index.
This is the same price increase as seen in the third quarter. For the whole of 2017, prices rose by 1.0 percent compared with the 3.1 percent drop in 2016.
In the Core Central Region (CCR), prices of non-landed private homes increased by 1.6 percent, compared to the 0.1 percent increase in the previous quarter. Prices in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) increased by 0.2 percent, after registering an increase of 0.5 percent in the previous quarter. Prices in the Outside Central Region (OCR) increased by 0.6 percent, after registering a 0.8 percent increase in the previous quarter.
For the whole of 2017, prices in the CCR, RCR and OCR increased by 0.8 percent, 1.6 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.
“The transaction prices reflect PropertyGuru’s Property Index, which saw a recovery in asking prices that started from Q2 2017,” said Hari V. Krishnan, Group CEO of PropertyGuru.
Krishnan noted that several factors contributed to the price increase, including developers’ confident land bids and recent en bloc fever. “The latter has pushed up private residential transactions as cash-rich en bloc sellers look for replacement homes.
“PropertyGuru’s property market outlook for 2018 is positive, with market sentiment expected to continue upwards. We anticipate between 16 to 22 new launches in 2018, with launch prices expected to be at least 5.0 percent higher than in 2017,” he said.
The URA flash estimates are based on transaction prices given in contracts submitted for stamp duty payment and data on units sold by developers up till mid-December. The statistics will be updated on 26 January when the full statistics for Q4 2017 are released.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
