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SINGAPORE: Singapore’s March home sales dropped to a three-month low as first-quarter private residential prices fell the most in five years.
Home sales slid 83% to 480 units last month compared with 2,793 in the same period a year ago, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) released yesterday. Sales fell 35% from February, the data showed.
Singapore’s first-quarter home prices slid for a second consecutive quarter as tighter mortgages cooled demand in Asia’s second most expensive housing market, data released by the URA on April 1 showed. The government introduced loan measures in June as it widened a campaign that started in 2009 to curb speculation in the Southeast Asian city.
“With the curbs in place, buyers have become more price sensitive and selective,” said Nicholas Mak, an executive director at SLP International Property Consultants in Singapore. “Lower sales will be the new norm.”
Among the developers that began sales of their projects was Metallurgical Corp of China’s unit MCC Land (Singapore) Pte, which sold 76 of 597 units marketed at its the Santorini project in the east of the island-state, according to the URA.
An index tracking private residential prices fell 1.3% to 211.6 points in the three months ended March 31, following a 0.9% decline in the previous three-month period, according to preliminary data released by the URA on April 1. The latest drop is the largest since June 2009.
This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 16, 2014.
