Residential

Seller’s stamp duty curbs speculation  

According to a study by Ngee Ann Polytechnic, subsales for non-land high-end private homes that were lodged for H1 were from units that were bought between 2009 and 2010. Similarly, in the mass-market segment, 73 per cent of subsale transactions involved properties bought in 2009 and 2010. Since subsales reflect the level of speculation within the market, this trend which shows that subsales involve long-holding transactions, suggests that cooling measures such as the seller’s stamp duty (SSD) have been effective in reducing speculation. Following the SSD scheme, residential properties that were bought from 2011 onward and sold within four years had to incur a maximum of 16 per cent stamp duty fee. According to the study by Ngee Ann Polytechnic, 75 per cent of the 40 subsales in the core central region made profits, while 97 per cent of the 142 subsales in ...