Singapore’s red hot public housing market sends home prices soaring
- Million-dollar price tags on a record number of public housing sales are a sign the city state is joining the frenzy gripping property markets
- Property prices in Singapore have recovered from a lockdown that lifted last June as low interest rates prompt buyers to look past a recession
Twenty-three resold government-subsidised flats were bought for at least S$1 million (US$742,570) in February, a new monthly record, according to data from real estate portal SRX Property. Thirty-six sales in that price bracket were concluded in the first two months of the year, a 350 per cent increase from a year earlier.
Prices in the city state have recovered rapidly from a lockdown that lifted last June as low interest rates prompt buyers to look past a deep economic recession. The pace of gains in public housing may feed through to private property, a sector that drew cooling measures from the government in 2018 and may well do so again.
Curbs on public housing “could adversely affect the value of the biggest assets of a large majority of the people,” said Nicholas Mak, the Singapore-based head of research and consultancy at APAC Realty Ltd. unit ERA. “All the warning shots fired by the government have been aimed at private housing, when prices of resale public flats are going up more.”
To maintain affordability, policymakers focus on the supply of new government-built flats and sell these at a discount to eligible buyers, he said.
A spacious two-storey unit, also known locally as an executive maisonette, at Toh Yi Drive was the most expensive resale public flat last month, fetching S$1.21 million, according to SRX Property. Prices of resale flats overall climbed 1.4 per cent in February from a month earlier and 8.3 per cent from a year ago, though they remain below a 2013 peak, the figures show.
01:39
In Hong Kong’s white-hot property market, even ‘haunted apartment’ prices are rising