PUBLISHED Tuesday 25 Apr 2017
Sentiment in the Singapore property market has all the earmarks of being enhancing after the government eased some of its curbs on the sector, yet unsold inventory will still weigh in the short-term, a DBS executive said Tuesday. Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” DBS Private Bank Chief Investment Officer, Lim Say Boon, said there could be a small price bound back in the central region due to constrained supply, but prices across the island will “at best” remain stable in 2017 due to corresponding demand-supply fundamentals.
“Stabilizing does not mean that the inventory already built up will not require some years to work through. They will still need some years to work through the inventory that’s already out there,” said Lim, who added that a sharp rebound across the board was unlikely.
Lim’s comments came on the back of maturing indications of strength from the property sector. Still, overall private home prices fell 0.5 per cent on-quarter in the first three months of the year – the 14th straight quarter of declines.
Singapore developer UOL Group, however, was upbeat after offloading more than half of the units under construction at its latest Clement Canopy development launched in February.
“It is a good test, because this was the first launch of the year. Analysts were all interested to see what the take up was going to be like,” said UOL Deputy CEO Liam Wee Sin, who assists in the management of its global portfolio of more than 11.5 billion Singapore dollars ($8.2 billion) in assets.
“To date, we have about 55 per cent sold. To me that’s very good and very healthy indeed,” he said.
The Clement Canopy is a joint venture between UOL and Singapore Land. UOL has two 40-story apartment blocks under construction, comprising 505 units, each configured with either two or four-bedrooms ranging from 635 square feet to 1,539 square feet.
The pricing varies between approximately $850,000 Singapore dollars ($608,000) to $1.82 million Singapore dollars ($1.30 million).
Unlike other projects of its size, the developer made a conscious decision to not build one-bedroom units, in the hope of attracting longer term speculators to the condominium.
“For this particular project, so far we have been getting about 90 percent local and 10 percent foreigners buying. They come from either China or Malaysia,” Liam added.
“Buyers today are very discerning. Because of the cooling measures, they really have options on the table and can go around from showflat to showflat. At the end of the day, when they move around and compare details and compare prices, we hope they end up buying a unit from us.”
The Clement Canopy is expected to be completed by 2020.
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