Singapore faces 10pc price crash

Singapore’s leading residential property developers are increasingly gloomy about the outlook for the city’s 2012 real estate market, with some analysts predicting that prices could fall by as much as 10%.

Wong Heang Fine, President of the Real Estate Developer's Association of Singapore (REDAS), said this week that “we are cautious. On the market going forward, it all depends on how the global economy goes in the next eleven months. So it's really anybody's guess."

The pessimism seems to be focused on home values which are not rising as quickly. The latest figures from URA (the Singapore government’s Urban Redevelopment Authority) shows the rate of price increase for private residential properties moderated for the ninth consecutive quarter at the end of last year, and rental rates are also slowing down too.

January sales volumes are expected to be good, but REDAS has warned that they will be distorted by a couple of big project launches. According to REDAS Presidnet Wong Heang Fine, the January numbers should be looked at “in perspective ... (they will have been) generated by the new launches of two or three projects. The numbers themselves do not really reflect the entire state of the market. "

Source: OPP.org.uk