Singapore’s residential segment has seen relatively fewer investors in recent years, following several rounds of cooling measures, revealed data from Credit Bureau Singapore.
From 38 percent in 2010, only 33.5 percent of investors with existing home loans took out new mortgages last year, The Straits Times reported.
The figure declined to 31.8 percent in the first eight months of 2012, and analysts expect a further drop following the latest round of cooling measures introduced earlier this month.
Despite the drop in proportion of home buyers investing in a second property or more, they still account for almost a third of the market.
They took out 2,037 home loans for the first eight months of 2012, not far from last year’s annual figure of 2,142.
Analysts believe this is partly due to the latest regulations to cap home loan tenures.
Ong Kah Seng, Director at R’ST Research, said these measures could lead to a bigger drop in the proportion of investors among new home buyers.
However, it would be “at an incremental pace as the aspirations for private housing among HDB owners is still very intense, and the ongoing low interest rates will still encourage home buying”.
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