Cooling measures to hold off buyers, according to CapitaLand

Buyers are waiting anywhere from five to six months to invest in the Singapore property market

Due to the most recent property cooling in Singapore, buyers are waiting anywhere from five to six months to invest in Singapore’s property market.

According to Liew Mun Leong, CapitaLand’s president and CEO, his company suffered a total of 26 per cent shrinkage in net profit.

Nevertheless, Leong raked in a total of S$1.35 (US$1.07 billion) billion in total sales last year in Singapore alone in correlation with 844 private units sold.

Despite his success in sales, Leong expects a slump in sales of residential units in the short-term due to the Singaporean government introducing the Additional Buyers’ Stamp Duty (ABSD) this past December. ABSD was initiated to prompt additional cooling in the property market.

“Developers are more skeptical – they are not launching so many projects. But the statistics show that buyers themselves have gone down 53 percent in terms of volume. Even secondary market has gone down 21 percent so the first two months demonstrate a drastic effect on buyer confidence,” said Leong.

He also said that it should most likely take an additional five to six months for buyers to reaccess their expectations and conform to the new ABSD.

Yet, CapitaLand is adamant that that their company will remain unscathed in these cooling measures.

Nonetheless, they will only determine and announce prices for their new property, Sky Habitat, days before the launch.

Property Analyst of DBS Vickers, Lock Mun Yee, said, “CapitaLand is a well-diversified company across the Asia Pacific region, as well as across the various sub property sectors which would give them better balance. The group has planted a lot of seedlings, having committed S$11 billion (US$8.7 billion) worth of new investments last year, and this should bear fruit over the next few years.”