2 charts that saved Singapore property market in 2012

6 rounds of cooling measures failed to dampen market demand.

Singapore’s residential sector has been very resilient this year, despite six rounds of cooling measures. Oct new-home sales, while down from Sep’s high 1,9k units, were still up 40% yoy, taking 10M12 sales to 23.6k units.

According to CIMB, the bulk of the residential buying remained in the mass market, stimulated by low interest rates and smaller units. This segment has emerged as an investment asset class. 

Here's more from CIMB:

Total outlay for mass-market units is manageable with rising expectations of a shift in expatriate rental demand away from the more expensive 9, 10 and 11 districts.

As such, developers continue to bid up land prices through Government Land Sales (GLS), comprising more players from Malaysia, China,
local contractors and property developers in this cycle.

Years of under-building by the HDB (public housing) coupled with the demand for hard assets in the private mass market have also helped to drive up the HDB resale index. The overall result is, the private property index (PPI) in 3Q12 inched up 0.6% qoq to 210.6 pts, yet another historical high. High-end prices remained depressed as foreign buying had effectively stalled though climbing mass-mid-end prices had started to entice some investors back into this segment.

Transaction volumes here have been showing some life in recent months.