Desmond Lee: Property market will continue to stabilise despite HDB and private home prices increasing in the first quarter of Q1
Desmond Lee, Minister for National Development in Singapore, said that even though there could be differences between quarters when it comes to the resale price of private homes and Housing Board properties, the authorities are expecting the market to continue stabilising.
Mr. Lee spoke to reporters during the opening ceremony of Greenfly Allotment Garden, Boon Lay on April 27 The Government will be keeping an eye on trends over the coming quarters.
His comments come after the HDB’s most recent resales data as well as private housing statistics for the first quarter of 2024.
The first quarter of 2024 saw HDB resale apartments were subject to an increase by 1.8 percent over the previous quarter’s 1.1 percent. It was the 16th straight quarter of price increases since the second quarter of 2020, according to figures published by the official board of the statutory.
In the meantime, the prices of private homes rose 1.4 per cent in the first quarter, based on statistics provided by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).
“Season by season, quarter-by-quarter, there will be fluctuations in (HDB) price of resales. If you analyze the trends year after year, last year’s resale price growth was much lower than the year before 2022 and 2022’s growth was less than the previous year,” Mr Lee said.
HDB resale prices rose 4.9 percent in 2023. This was lower than the 10.4 percent increase in 2022 and the 12.7 per cent climb in 2021.
The official said this was due to a variety of reasons, among them HDB having caught up with delays in construction caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the continued ramp-up of Build-to-Order (BTO).
The authorities have pledged to launch 100,000 BTO flats from 2021 until 2025. In February there were over 67,000 BTO homes available for sale.
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The private housing market has seen a substantial increase.
In the first half of 2024 in the first half of 2024, the Government Land Sales Programme is anticipated to offer 5,450 homes for private owners on 10 properties. This will be the seventh consecutive half-yearly rise in homes for sale since the start of 2021.
Sites listed on the confirmed list are offered for sale according to schedule regardless of demand.
“We also put in several cooling measures, so that we can ensure that the market for property in both the private and HDB side – is within the realm of economic fundamentals,” added Mr Lee.
On April 27, Mr Lee also revealed a five-room unit within a Design, Build and Sell Scheme project (DBSS) in ToaPayoh. It was worth $2 million. It is receiving attention in recent days.
In 2005, the program was launched to provide purchasers of flats with higher incomes houses with higher quality design and finishes. However, it was discontinued in the year 2011. DBSS flats, which are built on land that is owned by the government and designed by private developers, were suspended in 2011.
Mr Lee allayed fears over whether this is an indication of higher resale prices, saying: “These are headliners, and the percentage of flats sold for $1 million and more remains a very small percentage of the overall amount of resales which are conducted each year.” He noted that a lot of these flats possess certain characteristics, such as being rarer or jumbo units, on a high floor, or near a transport node and malls.
In March, 61 homes were sold for more than $1 million. This was a fraction of the 2,063 resale flats sold in March, based on information from the real estate portals Singapore Real Estate Exchange and 99.co.
The garden, which Mr. Lee inaugurated in Block 209’s ground floor Boon Lay Place in April it offers individual plots of gardening. This is the 15th garden that has been completed by HDB as well as URA under the Lively Places Fund.
Eight more gardens are also being planned for the future.
In March at the end of the month, HDB had disbursed nearly $1.1 million from the fund. It has benefited 223 projects, including community gardens, allotment and community gardens in open green spaces and high-rise carpark roof decks.