Is Singapore’s property market headed for a quick upswing?

by Dramelin 11:00 PM 0 comments

After a long, plodding downtrend, Singapore`s housing market may be gathering forces for a rebound.
Sigrid Zialcita, managing director for Asia Pacific research at Cushman & Wakefield, told CNBC`s "The Rundown" last week that she expected a turning point in prices "very soon.
" She pointed to the government`s recent move to ease some of its curbs on the sector as the reason for the market`s changing fortunes.
"That actually boosted sentiment in the market.
We`ve seen an increase in foot traffic and it`s incentivizing a lot of buyers," she said.
Others also noted that the government`s decision to loosen the reins may be spurring more property activity.
Hari Krishnan, CEO of website PropertyGuru, pointed to more optimism, with the number of property listings in the first quarter rising 2.
0 percent on-year and 2.
4 percent in March.
"These increases could be indicative of an uplift in seller sentiment," he said via email this week.
That hasn`t been reflected in prices yet.
In the first quarter, overall private home prices fell 0.
5 percent on-quarter, the 14th straight quarter of declines.
This time around, however, the bulk of the decline was in relatively small landed property segment, while non-landed prices were steady.
The city-state`s housing prices surged more than 60 percent from 2009 through 2013, propelled by rock-bottom global interest rates and quantitative easing in developed economies, even as the government enacted a series of cooling measures from 2011 to prevent a bubble from forming.
The measures, including an Additional Buyer`s Stamp Duty which could add as much as an additional 15 percent to the price, appeared to have eventually met with some success, with the property price index falling around 11 percent from the peak in the third quarter of 2013 through the end of 2016, according to data from Deutsche Bank in January.
Now, the government may have a more sanguine view, taking moves in early March to scale back some of the curbs, including lowering the seller`s stamp duty and shortening the minimum holding period to avoid it.