This is how property cooling measures impacted October home sales

Sales would have been 2,624 units.

According to DBS, primary sales reflect some impact from cooling measures. Oct primary homes sales (excl ECs) slipped 25.6% m-o-m to 1,948 units.

Here's more from DBS:

Adding ECs, the number would have reached 2,624 units, a tad below last month’s 2,771 units. The decent sales (with ECs) were a function of higher number of launches in the Outside Central Region (OCR) as well as strong demand as take up rates exceeded 1x.

The top five selling projects in the OCR made up 47% of total sales. Units at Bedok Residences and Bartley Residences changed hands at S$1200-1300psf.

Meanwhile, activities at the top end (S$3,000psf) also recorded a higher number of sales with 22 units transacted in Oct vs 10 units last month.

However, on a m-o-m basis, volume demand showed some impact of marginal buyers remaining sidelined following the govt’s move to tighten private property and HDB mortgage loan tenures on Oct 6.

More new launches to come. 10M primary homes sales have reached just under 20,000 units. With developers still planning to launch projects for the remainder of 4Q such as City Dev’s Echelon development, we believe monthly home sale volumes are likely to remain above average, particularly under a low interest rate environment.

However, price momentum is expected to moderate. We expect prices to come under slight pressure when the large incoming supply of private and public homes starts to kick in from 2H13.

Selective stock picking. We expect property stocks to continue trading at a discount to asset backing. Our property picks are for stocks that are market leaders in their segments with good earnings visibility as well as compelling valuations.

We continue to like CMA in anticipation of their acceleration in earnings growth as their portfolio matures and Capitaland which would benefit from their capital recycling activities in the coming years.