Singapore home prices fell in the quarter ended June, extending the drop in property values to a record 15th quarter as most measures to cool the market remain in place despite a slight easing in March.

An index tracking private residential prices fell 0.3 percent in the three months ended June 30 from the previous quarter, according to preliminary data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority released Monday. The almost four-year decline in prices is the longest since the data was first published in 1975.

Home values have dropped 12 percent from their 2013 peak, and sales have declined to about half that year’s level. Singapore’s central bank said it’s not yet time to ease property curbs and some adjustments made by the government in March don’t signal an unwinding of the measures.

While the property market has stabilized, “it is, however, not time yet to ease the cooling measures. They remain necessary,” Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, told reporters on June 29 at the release of the bank’s annual report. Mortgage rates are very low and “the risk of a renewed unsustainable surge in property prices is not trivial,” he said.

The government in March rolled back some property-market restrictions for the first time since imposing a series of cooling measures since 2009. Sales have shown some signs of a recovery as the moves stoked optimism that the market may rebound. Home sales in the first five months this year have risen about 75 percent from the same period a year ago, data showed

Source:
courtesy of BLOOMBERG

by Pooja Thakur Mahrotri

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