Parc Botannia sold the most units in December 2019.
With 370 residential units launched in December, developers sold 538 new private homes last month, down 53.1% month-on-month and 10.6% year-on-year, according to developers’ monthly sales data released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).
Last month’s top-selling projects were: Parc Botannia (49 units at a median price of $1,345 per sq ft) (psf), Parc Esta (45 units at a median price of $1,666 psf), Parc Clematis (40 units at a median price of $1,638 psf), and Jadescape (37 units at a median price of $1,715 psf).
Image: Colliers International
Experts: December a slow month for sales due to holidays and lack of new launches
“The lower sales volume in December is expected because of the year-end school holidays and lack of new launches to excite buyers,” said Sze Teck Lee, Head of Research at Huttons Asia.
OrangeTee & Tie Head of Research and Consultancy Christine Sun, on the other hand, attributed the small number of launches to developers’ anticipation of a resurgence in buying interest at the start of the year, when buyers start returning following the year-end holidays.
For the whole of 2019, around 9,849 new private homes were sold, up 12% from the 8,795 units moved in 2018. It is also the highest annual figure achieved since 2017’s 10,566 units – indicating buyers’ gradual acceptance of the property cooling measures rolled out in July 2018, said Tricia Song, Head of Research for Singapore at Colliers International.
She noted that the sweet spot continues to be family-sized units of two-bedroom units and three-bedders priced from $1million to $1.5 million.
“We estimate 78% of the total developer sales in 2019 were priced at the median price of $1,000 to $2,000 psf,” she added.
For this year, around 30 launches have already been lined up, with about 50% situated within the Core Central Region (CCR) and the rest evenly spread between the Outside Central Region (OCR) and Rest of Central Region (RCR), said Sun.
Private home sales to grow in 2020
“We anticipate that demand for new homes may remain robust, and the new sales volume could hover between 9,000 and 9,800 units for the whole of 2020.”
Sun expects new home prices to increase around 2 to 4% this year, while Song projects prices to grow 3%.
“We believe home sales will continue to be resilient in 2020, supported by several factors: more stable economic growth (Oxford Economics projects that the Singapore economy could grow by 1.4% in 2020); the low interest rate environment; low unemployment rate in Singapore; relatively healthy household balance sheet; available pool of genuine buyers; and no exuberance in the market, thereby reducing the risk of the government imposing new cooling measures,” explained Song.
“To ensure the property market remains stable, we believe the government will keep the existing property curbs in place, with little chance of unwinding any measures, barring a severe economic downturn,” she added.
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Victor Kang, Digital Content Specialist at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email victorkang@propertyguru.com.sg
