The much-anticipated Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) real estate statistics for 2nd Quarter 2013 is released today. Regarded by market watchers as an indication of the effectiveness of the 7th round of cooling measures, the figures are interpreted by some analysts of the futility of the cooling measures to dampen demand. Overall the URA property index for all private homes [excluding executive condominiums (ECs)]continues to climb reaching 215.4 from 213.2 in the first quarter. This marks a 1% increase, which is marginally higher than the quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) growth of 0.6% in the 1Q2013. And it is also higher than the flash estimate of 0.8% which was released on the first day of this month. Table 1 displays the price index and their q-o-q growth for the last six quarters.

Table 1: URA Price Indices For All Private Residences (exclude EC)

Source: URA On a more positive note, the price index for non-landed homes by region shows moderate or negative growth – for all but the Outside Central Region (OCR). Specifically the price in the Core Central Region (CCR) declined by 0.2%, whereas it inched up by 0.6% in the previous quarter. The Rest of Central Region (RCR) registered a slight uptick of 0.2% - unchanged from the 0.2% growth in the preceding quarter. In contrast, price shot up by 3.8% for the Outside Central Region (OCR) - a more than double increase compared to the 1.4% figure for 1Q2013. Again, we present the price index and their q-o-q growth for the last six quarters - but this time by region and for non-landed private housing.

Table 2: URA Price Indices For Non-landed Private Residences (exclude EC), by Region

Source: URA Despite the never-ending love affair with home purchases, the rental market is on the decline – the figure suggests. Rentals of private residential properties edged up only 0.3% in 2nd Quarter 2013, down from the 0.8% increase in 1Q2013. Copyright ® - All articles are the copyright of www.propertybuyer.com.sg and CoreConcept Systems Pte Ltd and the company reserves full rights to use, reuse in any form or in any media with or without attributing authors or supplanting the name of one author with another.

---

About Property Buyer http://www.PropertyBuyer.com.sg/mortgage We are a research-focused Singapore mortgage consultancy which helps you compare Singapore home loans either for new loans or refinancing. We use loan reports from Singapore's best loan analysis system (exclusive to us) at http://www.icompareloan.com/consultant/ to serve our customers. Our services are completely FREE to you as the banks pay us a referral fee upon loan disbursement.