SINGAPORE'S private-home prices rose at the slowest in almost four years in the second quarter, the government said yesterday.
Prices gained 0.4 percent in the three months to June, after rising 3.7 percent in the first quarter, the Urban Redevelopment Authority said in an e-mailed statement obtained by Bloomberg News.
Home prices have increased every quarter since March 2004, and rose 31 percent in 2007 to an 11-year high as Singapore's economy expanded and foreigners bought homes in the city-state. Prices picked up at a slower pace this year on concern over the global credit squeeze.
"The market expected a flattish second quarter and moving into the third quarter we expect it to be more or less flat as well," said Donald Han, managing director of Cushman & Wakefield Pte in Singapore.
Property developers have been keeping prices of new homes stable as they try to sell more units, he said. The proportion of unsold new homes rose in the second quarter, authority data showed.
About 67,700 homes are expected to be built after the first quarter of the year, with about 56,500 units to be finished between this year and 2011, the authority said. About 42,700 units, or 63 percent of the total, haven't been sold. That's higher than the 38,300 units, or 59 percent, that weren't sold in the first quarter.
More homes may be sold in the third quarter, as developers offer attractive loans and keep prices stable, analysts said.
"Home prices are likely to hold steady or decline by not more than 3 percent in the third quarter of 2008," Tay Huey Ying, director of research for Colliers International in Singapore, said yesterday.
"Although developers may not be able to take on an aggressive pricing strategy such as a year ago, neither do they need to resort to a price-to-sell strategy to move sales."