0.8% m-o-m increased from 719 units in December 2021 to 725 in January 2022. A year ago, new home sales excluding ECs were 58.8% lower y-o-y. Christine Sun, senior vice president of research & analytics at OrangeTee & Tie, notes that the impact of lower y-o-y was due to major launches in January 2021 including the 1,862 units at Normanton Park and 429-unit The Reef at Kings Dock.
Belgravia Ace took up a 90.6% rate for its 85-unit launch in January. Leonard Tay, head of research at Knight Frank Singapore, mentions that projects like Belgravia Ace have popular selling points and locational attributes will still perform well in terms of sales with many homebuyers buying for their own occupation.
42.9% of transactions in January (excluding ECs) were located in the RCR. This is followed by 40.9% of transactions in the OCR and 16.2% of transactions in the CCR. Nicholas Mak, ERA Realty’s head of research & consultancy, points out that the private housing take-up rate (ratio of the number of units sold to units launched) jumped from 170% in December 2021 to 378% in the following month.
How did the cooling measures affect the new sale market?
The current round of cooling measures seems to have had a milder impact on the new sale market compared to past cooling measures.
In July 2018, new home sales (excluding ECs) dropped 64.2% from 1,724 units to 617 units in August 2018 after the cooling measures that were implemented on July 6, 2018.
With the leap of new homes sold in January, OrangeTee & Tie’s Sun is positive that the market will bounce back in the coming months. Propnex’s Wong agrees when looking past trends, the performance in January perhaps offers some hope that the demand for new private homes has not been severely hit by the new cooling measures.
Overall private residential prices will pick up moderately sometime in Q2 2022 and thereafter increased by about 1-3% for the whole of 2022.
Upcoming launches include Royal Hallmark (32 units) freehold along Haig Lane, likely to launch soon. The project may see good interest from buyers due to the limited supply of larger homes in the area and the attractive price that start from $1,700 psf.
Another upcoming launches include The Arden (105 units) on Phoenix Road that may hit the market next month. Meanwhile, North Gaia EC is also expected to be put up for sale sometimes next month. It is said that the new launches will attract buyers’ interest with the declining stock of unsold new homes in the RCR and OCR.
What do you think of the increase of sales of private homes?
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