Premature to relax property cooling measures: Heng

The government feels it is still too early to lift the property curbs.

In his Budget 2016 speech, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced that "it is premature to relax the property cooling measures".

He added: "We will continue to monitor the property market closely."

Since 2009, the government has introduced a series of property curbs to stabilise the housing market, which includes the ABSD levy and loan curbs.

Analysts had earlier told PropertyGuru that private home prices need to drop significantly to warrant an immediate relaxation of the cooling measures.

"Underlying demand for Singapore property remains fairly high, given our stable fundamentals, thus the policy makers could be mindful of any unintended effect of a demand resurgence, should measures be adjusted," said Alice Tan, Research Head at Knight Frank Singapore.

According to JLL, private home prices surged by 62.2 percent during the 2009 to 2011 period, but have only dropped by 8.41 percent since then.

"The government might be persuaded to relax some measures if home price decline picks up pace such that annual declines threaten to enter into double digit territory amid slow sales activity and economy," noted Tay Huey Ying, Head of Research for JLL Singapore.

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg

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