Chart of the Day: Property investment sales up 1.4% to $3.94b in 1Q

Weak sales blamed on high asking prices.

Investment sales in the first quarter recorded one of the slowest since Q4/2009. According to Savills, from January to March 2014, investment sales reached S$3.94 billion.

This was S$52.8 million or 1.4% higher than the S$3.89 billion in Q4/2013, but still one of the slowest quarters since Q4/2009. The weak sales activity seen in the investment market was partly caused by the festive holidays, but more likely, property cooling measures and high asking prices had a big role to play.

Here's more:

In contrast to the last two years, the public sector contributed a larger share of 58.7% with a total of S$2.31 billion recorded. This is more than double the S$757.2 million reached in Q4/2013. Sixteen state land parcels were awarded under the GLS programme, including eight residential sites, seven industrial sites and one hotel site.

Of all the transactions in Q1/2014, the private sector accounted for 41.3% of total investment sales or S$1.63 billion. This represented a 48.0% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) decline from S$3.13 billion in Q4/2013 and a 44.4% drop from the same period of last year.