Condo resale market picks up in August

[reporter2]

Condo resale market picks up in August

Sep 13, 2017

Estimates show resale prices up 3.2% year on year, sales up 50.8%

Ann Williams


The resale market for condominiums shows signs of heating up, going by flash estimates from SRX Property released yesterday.

Resale prices of non-landed private homes last month rose 0.7 per cent month on month and 3.2 per cent from a year ago. They are now off just 4.3 per cent from their last peak in January 2014.

Month on month, resale prices in the core central region and outlying areas increased by 0.2 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively, while prices in the city fringe stayed the same, the estimates showed.

August's month-on-month price rise was a turnaround from the 0.3 per cent decline in July, which was revised up from a 0.5 per cent fall. Before July, resale prices had risen month on month since November last year, with just one dip in April. Year to date, prices have increased by 3 per cent.

In another indicator of a recovery in the private resale market, the number of non-landed homes sold rose 19.2 per cent to 1,273 units, compared with the 1,068 units moved in July.

Compared with a year ago, sales were up by 50.8 per cent, compared with 844 units resold in August last year. It was also the best monthly sales for the last two years.

Resale volume though was still 37.9 per cent lower than its peak of 2,050 units in April 2010.

SRX's median transaction over X-value (TOX) - which measures if buyers are overpaying or underpaying its computer-generated market value - was zero in August, unchanged from July.

For districts with more than 10 resale transactions in August, District 1 (Boat Quay/Raffles Place/Marina) and District 3 (Alexandra/ Commonwealth) posted the highest median TOX of $20,000.

Among relatively active districts, District 20 (Ang Mo Kio/Bishan/Thomson) posted a TOX of -$20,000.

[reporter2]

Non-landed resale prices inch up in August

Increase is led by rises in the prime and suburban regions, accompanied by a 19.2% jump in transaction volumes, says SRX Property; more foreign buyers noted

Sep 13, 2017

Lynette Khoo


NON-LANDED private residential resale prices inched up 0.7 per cent in August from July, led by the prime and suburban regions, and accompanied by a monthly increase of 19.2 per cent in transaction volumes.

These figures are estimates of SRX Property released on Tuesday, signalling a general uptrend in SRX Property's resale price index from October 2016 even as the government's price index that tracks all non-landed transactions (including new sales, resales and subsales) as at Q2 2017 has remained on a general downtrend since Q4 2013.

Consultants note that the differences could be due to the different methodologies, transactions tracked and the frequency at which the data is run. But on the whole, resale prices are stabilising.

Lee Nai Jia, who heads research at Edmund Tie & Company, said: "Generally, I think the overall prices are largely stable. The price increase tends to be project specific. I think the outlook for resale prices look promising, as the buyer sentiments have improved."

Dr Lee noted that there were also more foreign buyers, including mainland Chinese and Malaysians. "From the ground, some foreign buyers have divested their assets in other countries and redirected their investments to Singapore. The new launches on land sites here that were bought at higher prices are likely to reinforce the sentiments, and is likely to buoy prices further."

OrangeTee's head of research and consultancy, Wong Xian Yang, noted that small price fluctuations in both directions will persist this year as the resale market undergoes stabilisation.

Going by SRX Property estimates, resale prices in the Core Central Region (CCR) and Outside Central Region (OCR) rose 0.2 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively in August, while that in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) or city-fringe region remained unchanged compared to a month ago.

The overall August resale prices were down 4.3 per cent from the peak in January 2014. Compared to a year ago, resale prices in August rose 3.2 per cent, led mainly by the CCR and RCR region where the increases were 4.9 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

SRX Property estimates show that 1,273 non-landed private units were sold in the resale market in August, a 19.2 per cent increase from July. Going by these estimates, resale volumes in August were 50.8 per cent higher than that a year ago.

Dr Lee is expecting resale transactions to hover around 10,000 units and new sale transactions to cross 10,000 units for the whole of 2017, while the overall price trend for all transactions could stay flat. "It is likely that we see prices starting to push up in the third and fourth quarter, offsetting the decline in the first two quarters," he said.

Mr Wong believes that any recovery in prices will be slow, given that cooling measures are still in place and are unlikely to be removed over the short term.