Cushman & Wakefield attributed the surge in volume to the award of various residential Government Land Sales sites in Q1 2020.
Singapore saw property investment volume remain muted in the first quarter of 2020 at $3.02 billion, down 37% from the previous quarter, revealed Cushman & Wakefield.
The residential sector dominated the sales volume at $2.02 billion, which was double Q4 2019’s volume.
Cushman & Wakefield attributed the surge in volume to the award of various residential Government Land Sales sites in Q1 2020, resulting in the public sector to account for 68% of the total residential volume.
Read: Government Land Sales (GLS) Programme 101: The Secret Arsenal That You Didn’t Know
The industrial sector registered the second-highest volume at $606.8 million, down 22% quarter-on-quarter.
It is followed by the commercial sector at $183.4 million, a significant drop of 81% quarter-on-quarter. This comes as big-ticket commercial transactions were absent in Q1 2020, which is a direct result of Covid-19 pandemic as well as the rapid sell-off in stock markets globally.
“Sellers were unwilling to lower prices significantly, hoping that the impact on the economy would be temporary and that market confidence would recover rapidly after the pandemic was contained,” said Christine Li, Head of Research for Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Buyers, on the other hand, were waiting at the sidelines to enter at more attractive prices given the likelihood of global recession.
With this, the commercial investment sales market was dominated by “several strata deals of palatable quantum”. The $49.8 million sale of the 11th floor of Samsung Hub emerged as the biggest office deal of the quarter.
Another notable strata deal was the $37.1 million divestment of the 10th floor in Suntec Tower One.
“We are probably going to see more bite-sized investment deals in the second quarter and into the second half of 2020. Fundamentally, there is still appetite particularly for office, hotel and logistics assets,” said Shaun Poh, Executive Director and Head of Capital Markets Singapore at Cushman & Wakefield.
“We have not seen any distressed assets at the moment. This is largely because of the various stimulus packages by the government to help the hospitality as well as the retail-related industries, and sound financial position of most asset owners.”
He also expects launch activity to resume “after the circuit breaker measures are lifted as investors begin to have a better grasp of the market situation and are in a better position to calculate their sums”.
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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