Fewer HDB resale flats sold in Sept as prices continue slide: SRX

Fri, Oct 04, 2019


FEWER Housing and Development Board (HDB) resale flats were sold in September compared with the previous month, and their prices fell.

In all, 1,875 such flats changed hands, a 4.9 per cent fall from the figure in August, real estate portal SRX Property said on Thursday when releasing its preliminary figures. Compared with a year ago, last month's decline was 6.3 per cent.

Four-room flats made up 39.6 per cent of the units sold last month, five-room flats 24.9 per cent, three-room flats 25.7 per cent, and executive flats 7.6 per cent.

Resale flat prices dipped 0.2 per cent last month over August figures, but were up 0.1 per cent from the figures a year ago.

Overall resale flat prices for the third quarter of this year fell 0.1 per cent compared with the preceding quarter, continuing the downtrend since the beginning of 2019.

Compared with the peak in April 2013, the price decline was 14.1 per cent.

Prices in non-mature estates rose 0.9 per cent year on year, while those in mature estates fell 1.2 per cent.

A four-room unit at The Pinnacle@Duxton was sold at the top price of S$1 million last month. A 34-year-old executive maisonette at Bishan was also sold for the same price.

SRX forecasts that in the next three months, 2,107 flats will enter the HDB resale market as they approach their five-year minimum occupation period.

Its calculations show that people are not likely to pay more than the estimated market value for flats. Its data shows that the overall median transaction over X-value (TOX) was negative S$2,000 last month.

The median TOX measures whether people are overpaying (in the case of a positive TOX) or underpaying (when it is a negative TOX) relative to the SRX Property X-value which is the estimated market value for flats.

HDB executive flats recorded a negative median TOX of S$6,000 last month, while three-room and four-room flats recorded negative median TOX values of S$2,500 and S$1,000, respectively. Five-room flats recorded a positive median TOX of S$1,000.

Flats in Bukit Panjang recorded the highest median TOX, at positive S$8,000, while those in Ang Mo Kio recorded the lowest median TOX, at negative S$11,500.