SINGAPORE - There may be quarter-on-quarter variations in Housing Board and private home resale prices but the authorities expect the property market to continue stabilising, said National Development Minister Desmond Lee.
The Government will watch the trends very carefully over the next few quarters, added Mr Lee, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the launch of the Greenfly Allotment Garden in Boon Lay on April 27.
His comments came a day after the release of the latest HDB resale and private housing data for the first quarter of 2024.
Prices of HDB resale flats edged up 1.8 per cent in the first three months of 2024, outpacing the previous quarter’s 1.1 per cent. This was the 16th consecutive quarter of price increase since the second quarter of 2020, according to figures released by the statutory board.
Meanwhile, private residential property prices rose 1.4 per cent in the first quarter, based on figures from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).
“Season by season, quarter by quarter, there will be fluctuations in (HDB) resale prices. But if you look at the trends, year by year, last year’s resale price growth was much lower than the year before, 2022, and 2022’s lower than the year before that,” Mr Lee said.
HDB resale prices rose 4.9 per cent in 2023, lower than the 10.4 per cent increase in 2022 and the 12.7 per cent climb in 2021.
He attributed this to several reasons, including that HDB has caught up on the construction delays brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, and is continuing to ramp up Build-To-Order (BTO) flat launches.
The authorities have pledged to launch 100,000 BTO flats from 2021 to 2025. As at February, more than 67,000 BTO flats had been put on the market.
In tandem, private housing supply has also been ramped up.
Some 5,450 private homes across 10 confirmed sites are set to be released in the first half of 2024 under the Government Land Sales programme. It will be the seventh straight half-yearly increase in supply since the first half of 2021.
Sites on the confirmed list are launched for sale according to schedule, regardless of demand.
“We also put in a whole series of cooling measures, so that we ensure the property market – on both the private and HDB side – remains in line with economic fundamentals,” added Mr Lee.
Mr Lee on April 27 also singled out a five-room unit in a Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) project in Toa Payoh with a $2 million price listing that has gained attention in recent weeks.
The scheme was launched in 2005 to offer higher-income flat buyers homes with better designs and finishes, but was suspended in 2011. Built on government land, DBSS flats are designed and sold by private developers.
Mr Lee allayed fears over whether this is a reflection of higher resale prices, saying: “These are headliners, and the number of flats that are sold for $1 million and more remains a very small proportion of the overall volume of resale transactions that are carried out every year.” He noted that many of such flats have specific attributes, such as being rarer or jumbo units, on a high floor, or near a transport node and malls.
There were 61 flats that changed hands for at least $1 million in March. This was a fraction of the 2,063 resale flats sold in the same month, based on flash data from real estate portals Singapore Real Estate Exchange and 99.co.
The allotment garden that Mr Lee launched at the ground level of Block 209 Boon Lay Place on April 27 offers residents individual gardening plots, and is the 15th and latest garden to be completed under HDB and URA’s Lively Places Fund.
Another eight gardens are in the pipeline.
As at end-March, HDB had disbursed nearly $1.1 million under the fund, supporting 223 projects such as community and allotment gardens at open green spaces and multi-storey carpark roof decks.
