Private resale home prices up slightly

Private resale home prices up slightly
PHOTO: Private resale home prices up slightly

Resales of city centre homes lifted overall resale prices last month, as buyer sentiment recovered slightly after January's round of property market cooling measures, analysts said.

Resale prices of non-landed private homes rose 1.8 per cent islandwide last month from May, the Singapore Real Estate Exchange (SRX) said on Friday.

The overall uptick likely "reflected some laggard recovery in buyers' sentiments for secondary market homes," said R'ST Research director Ong Kah Seng.

Savills Singapore research head Alan Cheong said another probable reason for the increase could be a smaller number of transactions, skewed towards a higher price per sq ft (psf) range.

"We cannot conclusively say that the resale market has seen a turnaround," Mr Cheong said.

The overall rise was mainly driven by resale prices in the city centre, which climbed 5.5 per cent from May to last month.

This outweighed a marginal 0.2 per cent dip in resale prices in suburban regions.

On the city fringe, resale prices inched up 0.5 per cent month-on-month.

Mr Ong said the improvement in resale prices of city centre homes last month largely came from strong buyer interest in smaller units.

As for the dip in suburban resale home prices last month, analysts said this was largely because of the red-hot demand for new sales in those regions.

"Buyers are more interested in such sales as they are newer and they are buying for investment and capital appreciation," said ERA Realty key executive officer Eugene Lim.

Mr Lim added that as a result of the Monetary Authority of Singapore's latest move to tighten home loan financing, which took effect on June 29, he expects resale transaction volumes to fall in coming months.

Non-landed resale transactions reached an estimated 605 units last month, 21 per cent less than May's volume of 762 units. The figure for last month was 38 per cent lower year-on-year.

Rentals of non-landed private homes also slipped 0.2 per cent last month from May, marking a fifth consecutive monthly drop in overall rents.

This decrease was led by rents in the city centre, which fell 1.6 per cent.

Rents grew 0.4 per cent in the city fringe and 0.5 per cent in suburban regions.


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