Why the pickup in resale prices of non-landed homes surprised analysts

Could scarcity of deals be the culprit?

According to Alan Cheong of Savills, the pickup in resale prices was surprising. If it had been the case for primary market sales, analysts could have attributed the rise due to the tapering of sales in D’Leedon in June.

Owing to the attractive discounts offered over the past couple of months, stocks in the development were moving quickly up till about May and this overwhelming sales of new units in the Core Central Region.

However, the pickup of 5.5% in resale prices for the CCR is something worth noting. This in turn raised island-wide prices.

"However, upon closer examination, a probable reason for the increase in resale prices could be due to the paucity of transactions. This skewed the distribution towards the higher $psf range. Using caveats lodged to proxy SRX’s universe of transactions, we find that for the month of June, prices were skewed towards higher priced transactions compared with those in May," Cheong said.