Home sales surge 22% in November

Sales rose higher than expectations. Primary home sales in November came in at 1854 units. Excluding ECs, sales rose 22% m-o-m to 1701 units. This brings YTD Nov11 primary sales to 15,393 units, a tick higher than the corresponding period in 2010. Projects in the Outside Central Region continued to attract keen interest. The top two selling condominiums in this segment - CapitaLand’s Bedok Residences (477 units) and CDL’s The Palette (367 units) - contributed 88% of OCR unit sales. Core Central Region also saw a slight improvement in sales volume with the launch of FEO’s Scotts Towers (31 units). The number of new launches surged 48% m-o-m to 1979 units driven by the mass market segment (+133% m-o-m).

Market activity to fizzle out after recent policy measures.The introduction of Additional Buyers’ Stamp Duty is likely to dampen market transactions as buying confidence and higher transaction costs force potential foreign buyers and investors to re-evaluate their purchase decisions. We note that in the last 3 rounds of cooling measures, housing demand picked up a month after the announcement of the government measures.

However we think such a rebound is unlikely this time round given the severity of the measures. Instead, we believe sales performance from March 12 will be a better gauge of the resilience of underlying demand post the Chinese New Year and bonus periods. We forecast that primary sales volume in 2012 will slow to 11,000 – 12,000 units, in line with the 1,000 units sold per month in the mass and mid-market segments post GFC.