Singapore Q3 public housing resale prices register first decline since 2009

The resale prices of Singapore's public housing registered a decline of 0.9 percent in the third quarter, marking the first decline since the first quarter of 2009, the city-state's Housing and Development Board (HDB) said on Friday. The decline is also larger than official estimates of 0.7 percent drop released earlier this month. Resale transactions also decreased by about 13 percent in Q3, with 4,529 cases compared with that of 5,235 cases in Q2. The transaction decrease was registered across all types of flats. Industrial Insiders expect fewer public housing transactions this year, and resale prices to dip slightly. The city-state has introduced several rounds of cooling measures to curb high level growth in property market, including increasing extra stamp duty for foreigners, permanent residents and also the citizens, and a cap on the size of bank housing loans, which resulted in lesser transactions overall. On the supply side, the HDB said it is on track to launch 25, 000 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats in 2013. It has offered 20,161 flats under the BTO exercises and 4,455 balance flats so far. It will offer about 4,950 BTO flats next month, the HDB added.