Monthly Developer Sales April 2024

There were less new launches in April 2024 than in the previous month of March. Based on the developer sales data, there were three new launches in April that consisted of The Hill @ One-North with a total of 142 units, and boutique developments of The Hillshore (59 units) and 32 Gilstead (14 units). As a result, there were 301 new sales (excluding executive condominiums (ECs)) in April, 58.1% lower than the 718 sales in March. The highest selling project in the month was The Botany At Dairy Farm with 50 units sold, with the new launch, The Hill @ One-North, in second place after 42 units were transacted that comprised 29.6% of the project’s total.

Based on past data from the monthly developer’s sales, there was a monthly average of 616 new sales in 2022, and 556 units in 2023. But in the four months from January to April 2024, the monthly average was only 369 units. The official primary sales numbers in Q1 2024 together with the developer sales in April totalled 1,465 units in the first four months of 2024. It appears that homebuyers are now even more selective than before, no longer showing the kind of urgency and fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) behaviour at showflats that was a feature of the market from the second half of 2020 to the first half of 2022. Buyers continue to take their time to identify value opportunities when acquiring suitable properties for owner-occupation that suit their lifestyle preferences.

In addition to the greater variety of project choices that homebuyers now have, there is also now the added distraction of units from projects that sold out a few years ago being resold just before or just after completion. According to URA, the number of subsale transactions (defined by URA as the sale of a unit by one who has signed an agreement to purchase the unit from a developer or a subsequent purchaser before the issuance of the Certificate of Statutory Completion and the Subsidiary Strata Certificates of Title or the Certificates of Title for all the units in the development) has been on the increase throughout 2023, with a quarterly average of some 324 subsales (69.2% more than the quarterly average of 191 units in 2022).

This continued in Q1 2024 with 377 subsales. As these mostly comprised nearly-completed homes in the Rest of Central Region (RCR) and the Outside Central Region (OCR), homebuyers were attracted to the prospect of acquiring almost ready-to-move-in newly minted homes, when measured against the need to wait out a few years of construction after purchasing at a new launch. Thus, homebuyers who have been active in the subsale market have been generally willing to fork out decent premiums for such units.

For the rest of 2024, with interest rates are now expected to remain higher for longer with sticky inflation not going away, the year will likely be characterised by moderate sales with spikes of buying activity occurring only when a compelling project that ticks most of the boxes in buyers’ checklists is introduced. The buying decision of homebuyers in the new sales market will ultimately be motivated by the quality of a new project, location of the development, and the track record of the developer