Singapore, 14 Jan 2020 Private resale volume dipped month-on-month by 15.4 per cent in December. This is a seasonal decline owing to slower marketing activities during the year-end as many people are on holiday and buyers usually return to the market in January.
For the full year of 2019, the resale volume is 27.4 per cent lower than the year before. The stronger sales volume in 2018 was mainly driven by a higher number of resales transacted in the first half of 2018 before the cooling measures were implemented in July. After the cooling measures were implemented, demand for resale homes had remained subdued in the second half of 2018. The lackluster market demand could be attributed to stiff competition from many new project launches and weaker market sentiment.
Nevertheless, the strong buyer sentiment in the new sale market seemed to have spilled over to the secondary market in recent months. Buying interest seemed to have picked up at a few completed developments located near some of the newly launched projects. Therefore on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, resale volume was higher from August to December 2019 (see table below).
In fact, last month's sales volumes were 21.5 per cent higher than in December 2018 and 15.3 per cent more than the 5-year average volume. The higher y-o-y sales volume over the past few months suggests that the resale market may be slowly recovering.
Although buying sentiment may continue to recover, competition for buyers will remain stiff given the pipeline of new supply that will be entering the market. Therefore, we estimate that the demand for resale homes may continue to trend between 8,000 to 9,000 units this year. Prices may rise slightly by 1 to 3 per cent this year.