New private home sales fall in April as trade tensions hit Singapore’s economic outlook
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
New private home sales slipped to 663 units in April from 729 in March.
PHOTO: KINGSFORD GROUP
Follow topic:
SINGAPORE - April’s new private home sales fell short of expectations despite a surge in the number of newly launched units, as home buyers turned cautious amid ongoing global trade frictions and geopolitical tensions that have dampened Singapore’s economic outlook.
New private home sales, excluding executive condominiums (ECs), slipped to 663 units in April from 729 in March, also on a dearth of major mass-market new launches, but this is more than double the 301 units sold in April 2024
Excluding ECs, 1,344 new units were launched in April, compared with just 555 units in March, and up from a mere 278 units launched in April 2024. Including ECs, new home sales plunged to 759 in April from 1,510 in March, while the number of new units launched rose to 1,344 units from 1,315 over the same period. No new ECs were launched in April.
April’s three new projects – One Marina Gardens, Bloomsbury Residences in Media Circle and the ultra-luxe 21 Anderson in Tanglin – are situated in city fringe and prime locations, where launch prices tend to be higher, according to OrangeTee’s chief researcher and strategist Christine Sun.
The median price of the 937-unit One Marina Gardens was $2,948 per sq ft (psf), while that of the 358-unit Bloomsbury Residences was $2,454 psf, and for 21 Anderson, which has 19 units, it was $4,811 psf. These are well above the median price of major suburban new launch Lentor Central Residences, which was $2,213 psf in March, Ms Sun noted.
Ms Tricia Song, CBRE’s head of research for Singapore and South-east Asia, said: “Most new launches for the rest of 2025 will be from the prime and city fringe submarkets, which have higher price points and may not generate the same kind of volumes as that from the attractively priced and voluminous suburban projects in the first quarter of 2025.”
The momentum in private home price growth could “plateau in the next few quarters on a weaker economic outlook” as Singapore’s 2025 gross domestic product growth forecast was slashed to between 0 per cent and 2 per cent
Thus, going forward, developers may choose to wait out the heightened economic uncertainty and delay their launches until there is more clarity on global trade and the economic outlook, she said.
“Despite One Marina Gardens’ relatively attractive price point compared with existing launches in the downtown core and high-floor units offering views of Gardens by the Bay, the project was met with a lukewarm response,” Ms Song said.
About 41 per cent, or 384 units, were moved in April, compared with earlier major launches in the first quarter of 2025, which recorded an average sell-through rate of 68 per cent over their launch weekends, she added.
Although the take-up rates for April’s new launches paled in comparison with some projects in the first quarter, Ms Wong Siew Ying, PropNex head of research and content, said One Marina Gardens’ sales have been commendable, in the light of trade war tensions and the project not being near schools or HDB estates, where there is generally a ready pool of HDB upgraders.
ERA Singapore chief executive Marcus Chu noted that One Marina Gardens and Bloomsbury Residences are situated in precincts that attract more investor interest rather than owner-occupiers, while 21 Anderson caters to high-net-worth individuals seeking freehold, large-format units.
In April, the priciest new homes sold were all at 21 Anderson, PropNex noted. “Three units were transacted at around $21 million to $23 million each, making them (among) the highest-valued new condo deals in 2025 – just after a unit at Park Nova fetched nearly $38.9 million ($6,593 psf) in January. Of the three units sold, two were purchased by Singapore PRs and one by a Singaporean buyer,” Ms Wong said.
Mr Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia, pointed out that one unit at 21 Anderson “achieved a selling price of $5,127 psf, reflecting the confidence ultra high-net-worth individuals have in Singapore’s status as a safe haven in times of instability”.
Also supporting the private housing market are strong household balance sheets and still-low unsold inventory, which stood at 18,125 units, excluding ECs, in the first quarter. This compared with 29,149 unsold, uncompleted units in the first quarter of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and around 43,000 units in 2008 amid the global financial crisis.
