Singapore Non-landed Residential Property Market Update | H1 2022
In Quarter 2 2022, 2,397 new condo developments were sold while 4,414 resale condominium units were sold. Compared to Quarter 1 2022, new sales volume increased substantially by 31.3% from 1,825 transactions, while resale grew by 25.5% from 3,518 to 4,414 units.
The subdue transactions in the first quarter of the year is mainly due to the wait-and-see approach by homebuyers on the reaction of Dec 2021 cooling measures.
It took about one-and-a-half quarters before demand re-established itself in the private residential market in May 2022, when the launch and sales momentum of Piccadilly Grand and LIV@MB acted as the catalyst motivating buyers.
As for pricing, the Property Price Index increase 3.5% in quarter 2 as compared to 0.7% in quarter 1. Again, the launches of Piccadilly Grand and LIV@MB in May spark the market and moved prices upwards. These two projects in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) captured homebuyer attention and rekindled public interest. As such, the non-landed price index for the RCR jumped by 6.4% in Q2 2022.
These launches were able to jumpstart sales activity given that there is strong underlying demand for new projects.
Overall, there are more buyers than there are sellers in the current home market. The current tight supply of saleable inventory is playing catch-up with demand, due to a backlog of delayed new completions and lack of new development land during the initial years of the pandemic.
The URA All Residential Price Index has now increased by 4.2% in the first half of the year despite the cooling measures.
Predictions
Nevertheless, I expect growth but not prices to taper in the coming months as rising interest rates rein in homebuyer purchasing power. This will happen likely in Quarter 4 2022 when there are fewer launches and year-end holiday.
Quarter 3, will still see strong demand and transactions from other new project launches such as AMO Residences in Ang Mo Kio where 98% of the entire development were sold on the first day. There is also higher than expected demand from other new projects such as Sceneca Residence in Tanah Merah, Eden@Bedok and Lentor Modern @ Lentor.
Overall private residential prices are now projected to increase around 5% to 7% for the whole of 2022, against the initial conservative forecast of 1% to 3% growth when the cooling measures were announced in December 2021.
Buyers have shown an unanticipated resilience, the kind that will give developers more confidence to launch projects to tap on this buyer demand before interest rates increase further.
Notwithstanding the Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty (ABSD) for foreigners, interest in Singapore homes in a flight to safety is also likely to gain momentum with increasingly open borders.
New sale volume should now start catching up and remains on track to reach 8,000 to 9,000 units for the whole of 2022.
Rental Demand
The URA rental index for private residential homes increased 6.7% q-o-q in Q2 2022, reflecting a gain of 11.2% in the first half of 2022.
With the world opening borders, air travel on the rise and the land border with Malaysia now opened, the inflow of expatriates and professionals can only increase and with it, the demand for accommodation.
However, time will be needed for projects affected by construction delays to complete. Companies who have not adjusted their accommodation budgets accordingly for expatriates might face challenges settling in employees.
In addition, rental demand will be driven by local buyers who have not found replacement homes.
Inflationary pressures also have a knock-on impact on rents, as landlords who wield greater negotiating power transfer the increased costs to tenants.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, I expect prices to continue to grow and slowly tapered off at the end of the year. In my personal opinion, this is now the best time to sell a property as it will fetch you the greatest return due to strong demand.
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