Singapore’s property curbs send Sentosa prices plummeting

Condo prices are near an eight-year low.

Sentosa, where Australia’s richest woman,Gina Rinehart, and telecommunications billionaire Bhupendra Kumar Modi have homes, is losing its appeal.

Taxes as high as 18 percent on foreigners purchasing property introduced in 2013 have depressed prices and sales. A report by Bloomberg says that condominium prices in the residential enclaves that line the seafront with sweeping views across the Singapore Strait are near their lowest levels since the end of 2006 based on 15 transactions, according to Maybank Kim Eng Securities Pte. Some bungalows are being sold for more than 50 percent below the peak in 2012, Urban Redevelopment Authority, or URA, data show.

Bloomberg adds that Singapore has been trying to rein in the property market since 2009, with the toughest measures, including stricter lending, introduced last year. The island-state is unlikely to ease the curbs until “a meaningful correction” takes place, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Oct. 28.

“The way prices have fallen is like during the crisis time” in 2008, Alan Cheong, a Singapore-based director at broker Savills Plc, said, referring to values on Sentosa Island. “The measures have impacted demand and we are seeing a diversion of interest by foreigners away from here.”

Home prices on Sentosa have fallen about 40 percent since 2012, compared with a 28 percent drop in 2008, Cheong said.

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