Private home prices decline in 14th straight month in 1st quarter of 2017

Singapore private home prices declined in the first quarter of 2017, in 14th straight month of contraction, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) informed on its 3 April press release.
From 137.2 points in the 4th Quarter 2016 to 136.5 points in the 1st Quarter 2017, the private residential property index decreased by 0.7 point, which means a decline of 0.5 percent, the same as in the previous quarter in 2016.

Prices of non-landed private residential properties decreased by 0.2 percent in the Core Central Region (CCR), compared to the 0.1 percent previous increase.
Prices in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) was still the same, after registering a decrease of 2.0 percent in the previous quarter while prices in Outside Central Region (OCR) were up by 0.1 percent, after registering a 0.6 percent decline in the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, prices of landed residential properties were down 2.8 percent, compared to the 0.8 percent increase in the previous quarter in 2016.
The flash estimates are composed from transaction prices given in contracts submitted for stamp duty payment, together with data on units sold by developers up to mid-Mar 2017. URA informed that the statistics will be updated after 4 weeks when they release the full real estate statistics for 1st Quarter 2017.
URA said, “Past data have shown that the difference between the quarterly price changes indicated by the flash estimate and the actual price changes could be significant when the change is small.“
URA also adviced the public to interpret the flash estimates with caution.