Singapore’s real estate market ranks 13th most transparent globally

No Asian city earned a spot in the top 10 - will Singapore be the first one to make it?

A biennial index released by Jones Lang LaSalle and LaSalle Investment Management reveals that recovering real estate markets have prompted renewed impetus to transparency improvements following a slowdown in progress during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Nearly 90 percent of markets have registered advances in real estate transparency during the past two years, driven by improving market fundamentals data and performance measurement, combined with better governance of listed vehicles, it said.

Chris Fossick Managing Director of Singapore and South East Asia, Jones Lang LaSalle commented: “The real estate markets in South East Asia have made significant inroads in improving their transparency over the past two years. Three out of the top 10 improvers globally are from this region – The Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. All three countries have improved on the back of greater availability of market data and changes in the regulatory and transaction processes."

With the exception of Vietnam, most South East Asia markets are either in the transparent (Singapore and Malaysia) or semi-transparent band (The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia). This finding is echoed by the recent rise in direct foreign investments (FDI) into the ASEAN especially into Indonesia and the Philippines. The rise of FDI into ASEAN is testament of global investors’ confidence of the long term growth potential in this region.

He continued: “Whilst there are no Asian cities yet in the top 10 highly transparent markets globally, Hong Kong ranks the highest in Asia at 11 with Singapore closely behind at 13. Both Singapore and Hong Kong have shown improvements in their overall global ranking with Hong Kong marginally ahead of Singapore as a result of more detailed market fundamental data.”