SINGAPORE - The weakening of private home prices gathered pace in the third quarter, as they headed south for the eighth straight quarter.
Private home prices fell 1.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter in July-Sept period, compared with a 0.9 per cent price decline in the second quarter, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) said on Friday (Oct 23).
It was similar to the projected decline when the URA released its flash estimates earlier this month, and is the fastest pace of quarterly decline seen in the last two years.
Private home prices are now down 8 per cent from their last peak in the third quarter of 2013.
Non-landed private home prices fell more steeply across all regions.
They were down 1.2 per cent in the core central region, down 1.6 per cent in the city fringes and down 1.6 per cent in the suburbs.
This was compared with declines of 0.6 per cent, 0.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively in the second quarter.
But landed home prices fared slightly better. They declined by 0.4 per cent, compared with a 1.0 per cent decline in the second quarter.
Home vacancy rates, which previously reached a nearly 10 year high, improved marginally. The vacancy rate of completed private homes moderated 0.1 percentage points from the second quarter to 7.8 per cent at the end of the third quarter.
Supply continues to be ample. Upcoming supply as at the end of the third quarter was 58,348 uncompleted private residential units , excluding executive condominiums (ECs), compared with 61,237 units in the second quarter.
Of the upcoming supply, 22,456 units remained unsold as at the third quarter.
After adding the supply of 14,540 EC units in the pipeline, there were 72,888 units in the pipeline. Of the EC units in the pipeline, 6,897 units remained unsold.
