Private home prices fall for 9th straight quarter in Q4 of 2015

SINGAPORE - Private home prices in Singapore fell for the ninth consecutive quarter in the fourth quarter (Q4) of last year, according to the flash estimate released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Monday (Jan 4).

According to URA, the private residential property index fell by 0.7 points from 142.3 points in Q3 2015 to 141.6 points in Q4 2015, a decline of 0.5 per cent.

Over the whole of 2015, private property prices fell 3.7 per cent. This represents a slower pace of decline than the 4.0 per cent fall in 2014.

According to the figures, prices of private homes in the core central region (CCR) fell by 0.4 per cent from the previous quarter, while private property prices outside of the core central region remain unchanged from the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, landed property prices fell by 2.1 per cent in Q4, and 4.4 per cent in the whole of 2015.

The flash estimates are compiled based on transaction prices given in contracts submitted for stamp duty payment and survey data on new units sold by developers during the first 10 weeks of the quarter, URA explained.

The statistics will be updated in four weeks, when URA releases its full real estate statistics for the final quarter of the year.

seanyap@sph.com.sg