THE property market may have gone quiet, but home prices continued their steady climb in the first three months of this year, albeit at a much weaker pace.
Private home prices rose 3.7 per cent between January and March, down from 6.8 per cent growth in the previous three months.
It was also notably lower than the 4.2 per cent rise that had been predicted early this month, based on transactions in the first 10 weeks.
This suggests that prices may have started to decline last month, dragging down the whole quarter's growth.
Experts suggested that private home prices could be holding partly because developers are putting off project launches, creating a perceived lack of supply of new homes.
Developers had 10,239 new units ready for sale in the first quarter that were not launched - that is a three-year high and 3,000 more than in the previous quarter.
The number of units actually launched in the quarter - 1,343 - was the lowest in almost four years.
Almost half of these unlaunched units were in the core central region, comprising the prime Districts 9 to 11, the Marina Bay area and Sentosa.
The rest was evenly divided between the city-fringe and suburban regions.
Mr Ku Swee Yong, director of business development and marketing at Savills Singapore, said developers may not be delaying launches to deliberately prop up prices but rather to wait out the weak market sentiment and uncertain global outlook.
Whatever the reason, the lack of launches has forced homebuyers to turn to the secondary market, where they bought 2,304 units in the quarter - three times more than what they bought directly from developers.
This shows there is still an underlying demand for homes, and may have helped sustain prices at current levels, analysts said.
The slowdown affected private homes in all areas, from prime to suburban regions. Each region saw prices rise only 3 to 4 per cent, from 7 to 8 per cent the previous quarter.
Sub-sales - this is when a person buys an uncompleted home and then sells it again before it is built - made up a tenth of all sales.
In the case of public housing, resale prices rose 3.7 per cent in the first quarter, down from 5.7 per cent previously. But sales dropped 6 per cent to 6,360 transactions.
Apart from housing, the sluggish market also depressed growth in the prices and rentals of all types of properties, with office prices logging the biggest slowdown.
They rose only 1.1 per cent in the first quarter compared with 8 per cent in the previous three months.
But office rentals stayed strong, as businesses continued to expand and space remained tight.
