Condo resale transactions up in July to avoid ghost month

Property experts share insights on latest condo resale data.

SRX & 99.co released data on the condo resale transactions in July, with prices increasing year-on-year but declining month-on-month.

Units rose in July due to avoiding the Lunar Seventh Month, which begins on 16 August, said Huttons Asia CEO Mark Yip.

"There was a pick up in the HDB resale market in July which saw more than 30 million-dollar flat transactions. These reasons may have pushed up transaction volume by 4.0% month-on-month in July," said Yip.

Despite the increase, Yip said it is the first time since March 2020 that prices declined for two straight months.

"The cloudy economic outlook may have led to some budget sensitive buyers to negotiate harder and that has resulted in softer prices in July," said Yip.

Price correction

OrangeTee property expert Christine Sun said the condo resale prices fell a second consecutive month by -0.2 per cent in July, the "price drop is too marginal to be considered a price correction."

"Instead, the trends can be interpreted as an early sign of a price stabilization, largely due to a ramp-up of home supply from more condominium completions.," said Sun.

Resale volume rose slightly in July after buyers returned from the June holidays.

For PropNex, head of research Wong Siew Ying, the prices ar epeaking and may continue to stabilise, which shows efficacy of recent rounds of cooling measures in December 2021, September 2022, and April 2023.