43% hike in new private home sales

By Romesh Navaratnarajah: Last month's property cooling measures failed to dampen new home sales in Singapore, with 2,013 private housing units sold in January, a 43 percent increase over the 1,410 sold in December 2012, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). Year-on-year, this is an eight percent rise compared to January 2012 after the first round of additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) was introduced.

Including executive condominiums (ECs), the sales volume was up 0.4 percent from December 2012 at 2,269 units.

However, developers launched fewer residential projects in the month, releasing 1,799 units as compared to 2,225 in the previous month.

Three projects recorded sales of above 250 units last month, with La Fiesta in Sengkang, Q Bay Residences in Tampines and d'Leedon, located on the site of the former Farrer Court recording strong sales of 404, 372 and 263 units at median psf prices of S$1,163, S$1,102 and S$1,406 respectively.

However, a drop in sales of ECs was recorded with only 256 units sold in January, compared to 849 in December. The Topiary in Fernvale Lane was the best-selling EC project, selling 100 units at a median price of S$736 psf.

Tejaswi Chunduri, Regional Analyst at PropertyGuru, said: "Despite the recent cooling measures, the high sales figures for January are indicative of robust demand from genuine home buyers. Buyers were also likely attracted to the discounts offered by a number of developers." Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor of PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@allproperty.com.sg Related Stories: Far East is best-selling developer again

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