January Singapore Property Sales Report: weak sales on Jan 2009

Sales data remain weak in January. Sale of new units of non-landed property (NLP) by property developers remained weak for the month of January. According to the latest monthly data released by URA, new NLP launches increased by 30.2% MoM to 177 units in January. All of the new launches are located in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) (88 units launched) and the Outside Central Region (OCR) (89 units) and no new NLP launches took place in the Core Central Region (CCR) for the month as sentiments towards the mid and high end property projects remained weak.

Mass market properties continue to dominate sales. New sales of NLP fell by 22.1% MoM, from 122 units in December 2008 to 95 units in January 2009. Mass market properties (less than S$1,000 psf) continued to dominate sales in January, with 83 of the new units sold in January priced within the mass market range. Projects that generated the most new sales in January are Nova 88 (16 units sold), The Aristo @ Amber (14 units sold) and Palmera Residence (11 units sold).

Expecting better sales data for February. We are now expecting a significantly better set of sales data for the month of February which will be underpinned by the recent success of some of the new mass market launches (Caspian: ~460 units out of 712 units sold at S$580-600 psf, Alexis: fully sold (293 units) at ~S$850-1,000 psf). The recent success of mass market launches in the midst of an unprecedented economic downturn came as a surprise but it also highlighted the strong pent-up demand for mass market properties coming from HDB upgraders.


Click here for more Property News