The month of December was a dismal period for developers looking to sell housing units, according to several analysts.
Data published on Wednesday by the URA revealed that sales of new private homes excluding executive condominiums (ECs) hit a five-year low of 259 units in the last month of 2013.
While home buying activity in December is usually weak due to the school holidays, the latest sales figure is approximately 82 percent down from the 1,410 units sold in December 2012.
Getty Goh, Director at Ascendant Assets, felt that a “perfect storm of the festive season, cooling measures and lack of new launches led to the slump”.
A Knight Frank report added: “The significantly weakened sales performance was mainly attributed to the TDSR ruling and ABSD, which have dampened demand from home buyers and property investors.”
The report went on to say that there was almost no new launch except for a small landed development in Sembawang called Avant Parc which comprises 15 units.
Alan Cheong, Research Head at Savills, said the absence of any new non-landed launches was a truly unique state of affairs in that all developers who had the permits for a new launch did not show hands in the non-landed segment.
“Somehow, both developers and potential buyers were either won over by the school holidays or for some other reasons that they refrained from doing anything.”
Looking at the whole of 2013, the total annual sales volume reached 15,015 units, which is 32.4 percent lower than the previous year and the lowest annual sales performance since 2009, said Knight Frank.
Meanwhile, Cheong expects to see a pick-up in January due to two major launches coming to market soon, namely The Hillford with 281 units and The Panorama (698 units).
“Therefore if we factor back in the smaller projects, sales could rise back to around the 1,000 unit level. However, if the smaller projects continue to shy away from being launched, then primary sales could be in the 500-600 unit range,” he said.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
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