HDB resale prices fall
Housing Board resale prices edged down 0.4 per cent in December, marking the 11th straight month of decline and reaching a 41-month low, according to SRX Property flash figures yesterday.
Prices are now at their lowest since August 2011.
The price drop was driven by non-mature estates, which saw resale prices decline 0.9 per cent last month, but rose 0.2 per cent in mature estates.
The fall in prices was driven by four- and five-room flats, with prices slipping 0.7 and 0.3 per cent, respectively. Three-room flat prices stayed flat, while executive flat prices rose 1.8 per cent.
Overall, prices have declined 6.1 per cent from the same period a year ago and 10 per cent from the peak in April 2013, SRX said.
In the traditionally quiet end-of-year season, fewer flats changed hands. There were 1,295 transactions in December, down from 1,350 the month before. But this was 28 per cent higher than the 1,012 flats sold in December 2013.
According to SRX, overall median Transaction Over X-Value (TOX), which measures whether people are overpaying or underpaying the SRX estimated market value, remained negative in December at minus $4,000.
QUEENSTOWN TOP
For HDB towns with more than 10 resale transactions last month, Queenstown reported the highest median TOX of $3,000, followed by Bukit Merah and Jurong East with $1,500.
The lowest median TOX were in Ang Mo Kio, Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang, at minus $19,500, minus $14,000 and minus $11,000, respectively.
Median TOX for HDB three-, four-, five-room and executive flats were all negative in the range of minus $1,000 to minus $7,000.
Said ERA Singapore's key executive officer Eugene Lim: "As we are expecting bank housing loan interest rates to increase this year, we could possibly expect resale HDB prices to decline further before stabilising.
"For the whole of 2015, we are expecting another 5-8 per cent decline in overall prices."
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