New private home sales crashed 73% to 481 units

Strong impact from property loan curbs.

According to PropNex, developers sold 481 private homes, excluding executive condominiums (ECs) in July 2013, down a whopping 73% from the 1,806 units sold in June; this is also the lowest recorded transaction volume in recent years. 

Including ECs, which are a public-private housing hybrid, developers found buyers for 593 homes, reflecting a plunge of 72% from the June’s figure of 2,119 units. Despite the blip, developers have moved a healthy 10,631 units in the first seven months, or a monthly average of 1,518 units.

This figure is lower than the 14,181 units that were registered the same time last year (or 25% lower).

“We believe the slowdown is largely due to the knee-jerk reaction following the rollout of the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) framework as a more rigorous checklist which will take 10 to 14 days for banks to approve property loans.

At the same time, tighter loan-tovalue (LTV) limits on second and subsequent housing loans and longer-tenure loans were also plugged. It will take some more time for people to digest not just the loan curbs, but the cumulative impact of all the earlier rounds.

Additionally, there were no major project launches in the month of July, adding on to the lowest number of new private homes sold," commented Mr Mohamed Ismail, CEO of PropNex Realty.

Despite no major launches in July, the best-selling projects which performed well were namely Forestville, Vue 8 Residence, Bartley Ridge, Kingsford Hillview Peak, Jewel @ Buangkok and Riversails.

Forestville sold 78 units at a median price of $734psf, Vue 8 Residence moved 63 units at $1,004psf. Bartley Ridge found buyers for 25 units at $1,216psf, Jewel @ Buangkok sold 24 units at $1,201psf, whereas both Kingsford Hillview Peak and Riversails sold 18 units each at median prices of $961psf respectively.