Real estate investment sales fall 52%: Report

Real estate investment sales in Singapore fell 52 per cent year on year to $5.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, due to the cooling of collective sales fever and residential property curbs.

This is according to a Colliers International research report released yesterday.

The corresponding period last year had seen a record level of residential collective sales, Colliers noted.

In the residential sector, the July 2018 cooling measures continued to depress sales.

Sales plunged by 82 per cent from a year ago to $1.7 billion amid declines in all sub-segments, including collective sales and good class bungalows.

In contrast, public land sales saw a bumper quarter, recording 32 per cent year-on-year growth to $2.1 billion. They accounted for 40 per cent of total investment sales.

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Thanks to land sales, residential investment sales jumped 48.2 per cent compared with the previous quarter.

Two Government Land Sales sites - Tampines Avenue 10 and Kampong Java Road - were among the top five largest transactions during the quarter.

On a year-on-year basis, commercial investment sales quadrupled to $1.1 billion in the first quarter on a low base.

Colliers expects investment activity to pick up in the coming quarters, including potentially more commercial (office and retail) deals to be concluded towards the year end.

It said the Urban Redevelopment Authority's Draft Master Plan 2019 incentives could spark more investor interest in the redevelopment of older buildings in the Central Business District.

In the industrial property segment, investment sales value doubled to $555 million in the quarter from the year-ago period, mainly due to SGRE Banyan's acquisition of warehouse facilities on Jurong Island for $228 million.

For the whole of this year, the firm estimated that total investment sales will be $38 billion, on a par with last year's level. - THE STRAITS TIMES