Residential

Indications of cooling property market

After five rounds of cooling measures to discourage speculative demand and the increase in housing supply as part of the measures to cool the property market, results can be seen in the slight decrease in private home prices in Q1 2012, the fall in the proportion of sub-sales (an indicator of speculative demand) to 4%, as well as the fall in the proportion of private residential property bought by foreigners and companies to 7%. The resale prices for HDB flats have also slowed down, increasing by a mere 0.6% in Q1 2012.

However, the increasing number of shoebox units and rising mass market prices remained problematic. As of end-Q1 2012, the 2,500 completed shoe-box units made up 1.2% of the 210,000 non-landed private housing units and the figure is expected to hit 9,700 by 2015. 80% of these completed units are located ...