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Private non-landed housing resale volume and prices rise in May

SINGAPORE — The private housing recovery found a stronger foothold in May, as the resale volume jumped 17.4 per cent from the previous month and prices resumed their upward climb.

SINGAPORE — The private housing recovery found a stronger foothold in May, as the resale volume jumped 17.4 per cent from the previous month and prices resumed their upward climb.

The latest flash estimates by SRX Property released yesterday for private non-landed resale transactions showed that the resale volume last month amounted to an estimated 1,235 units, up from the 1,052 units resold in April. Year-on-year, resale volume was 57.7 per cent higher than the 783 units resold in May last year.

Meanwhile, private non-landed residential resale prices increased 0.4 per cent last month from April, when prices registered a slight 0.2 per cent decline after a five-month rising streak. Transactions in both the Core Central Region and Rest of Central Region both reflected price gains of 1.1 per cent in May but these were partially offset by the 0.4 per cent price decline in the Outside Central Region. Year-on-year, overall non-landed private residential resale prices were up 1.5 per cent in May. Year-to-date, they had risen by 2.1 per cent in May.

The improving sentiment in the resale market mirrored that seen in the new home sales market, where the total number of units sold in the first four months of the year exceeded 50 per cent of last year’s full-year volume. From January to April, developers sold 4,696 homes, well over half of the 8,364 units in the whole of last year amid rising expectations that the housing market is bottoming out.

Analysts pointed to the easing of property market cooling measures in March as the key factor boosting sentiment. Homeowners now only have to wait three years instead of four before selling their properties to avoid paying the Seller’s Stamp Duty (SSD), and the rate has been reduced by four percentage points for each tier to 12 per cent (sold within first year), 8 per cent (more than one year and up to two years) and 4 per cent (more than two years and up to three years).

The Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) framework has also been eased, with the 60-per-cent threshold no longer applicable to mortgage equity withdrawal loans with loan-to-value ratios of 50 per cent and below.

In a research note on the Singapore residential sector last week, OCBC Investment Research analyst Eli Lee said: “Buyer sentiments appear to have improved after the latest tweaks to the property curbs in March where some measures relating to the SSD and the TDSR were relaxed. We believe these changes were, on a net basis, supportive of the physical market and continue to forecast for home prices to reach an inflection point by 2018.”

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