Singapore Home Sales Nearly Triple in November as Buyers Snap Up Surge in Supply 

Singapore private home sales nearly tripled to 784 units in November as a trio of condo launches helped snap three straight months of declining housing deals.

Developers’ home sales, excluding subsidised executive condos, jumped 286 percent last month from the 203 condos that changed hands in October. The November total was also about 200 percent more than the 206 units that traded during the same month in 2022, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).

The three projects which debuted last month made up 73 percent of the November total, selling 570 new homes during the month, led by CapitaLand trading 329 condos at its J’den project in Jurong East.

“The confidence-boosting sales take-up of new private homes in November has helped to lift market sentiment somewhat after a few months of weaker transactions from August to October,” said Wong Siew Ying, research and content head at PropNex Realty. “Despite the various challenges, all three new launches have achieved a positive outcome in our view – and have offered more optimism for upcoming launches in 2024.”

Supply Surges

Christine Sun, senior vice president of research and analytics at OrangeTee & Tie, said last month’s rebound pointed to pent-up demand from homebuyers who had not seen a major project hit the market in the preceding two months.

Sun noted that developers placed 970 new units up for sale in November, which was nearly 18-times the 54 units launched in October and 15-times the 64 units brought to market in September.

CapitaLand last month sold 89 percent of its 368-unit J’den project at a median price of S$2,475 per square foot of built area, according to data from Huttons Asia.

Demand for the Jurong East development was bolstered by there not having been a project launch in the area in 10 years, and due to its direct link to an MRT station – a feature prized by consumers – according to Lee Sze Teck, senior director for data analytics at Huttons.

Located on Bukit Timah’s posh Shelford Road, UOL Group’s 180-unit Watten House also drove sales last month with 153 units – equivalent to 61 percent of the total project – trading at a median price of S$3,199 per square foot.

“The limited supply of new homes in the prime Shelford Road area attracted a huge amount of interest from buyers. In particular, Watten House offers mostly large format units which are in short supply in Singapore,” said Lee.

The other major launch last month was the 474-unit Hillock Green project in the up-and-coming Lentor Hills neighbourhood, where 132 units – equivalent to less than a third of the development – sold at a median price of S$2,110 per square foot.

The project, which is being developed by a joint venture between Yanlord Investment’s United Engineers unit and Soilbuild Group, is the latest in a string of Lentor Hills developments to reach the market over the past year.

These include GuocoLand’s Lentor Modern, which launched in September 2022, as well as Lentor Hills Residences which debuted in July of this year and is being developed by GuocoLand together with Hong Leong and its TID Residential joint venture with Japan’s Mitsui Fudosan.

Home Sales to Hit 15-Year Low

November’s sales bring Singapore’s tally for the first 11 months of the year to 6,316 units, which is 11 percent shy of the 7,099 homes sold in 2022.

With December traditionally a slow month for developers, PropNex expects private home sales for the full year to total from 6,500 to 7,000 units, in what would be Singapore’s lowest 12 month total in a decade and a half, or since the 4,264 transactions recorded in 2008.

“Developers’ sales in December will certainly turn out lower than November’s volume as there are no fresh projects put on the market this month,” Wong said. “In addition, sales also tend to be slower in December owing to the seasonal lull and school holidays where more people may be travelling.”

Following the holidays, there are at least five major projects slated for launch in January that would introduce 830 new homes to the market.

The URA has been rolling out cooling measures and increasing the supply of land for new housing projects after home prices rose by 10.6 percent in 2021 and 8.6 percent last year, according to the agency.

Last week, the URA unveiled the government land sale plan for the first half of 2024, which includes 10 residential sites to be put up for tender. With that pipeline set to yield up to 5,450 homes, the plan represents the URA’s largest supply of land for housing since the first half of 2013, as the government prioritises housing affordability.

Average home prices across Singapore inched up by just 0.5 percent in the third quarter from the preceding three months, following a 0.2 percent decline in the second quarter.