Completed condo prices up 0.1% in Jan: NUS index

Prices of completed condominium units and apartments inched up 0.1 per cent in January compared to a month ago, led by the small units and units in the non-central region.

This is based on flash estimates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) for its Singapore Residential Price Index (SRPI) series, reflective of transactions received as at Feb 22, and followed a revised 0.6 per cent price fall in completed private homes in December.

January 2016 estimates are based on a revised basket - spanning 574 private residential projects across 26 postal districts that were completed between October 2003 and September 2015 - that was fixed with December 2015 as the base period.

The NUS SRPI tracks a fixed, pre-determined basket over time - hence taking into account first-time sales and a larger proportion of resales - and uses hedonic regression to estimate prices.

NUS said the revised basket differs from the previous basket in three main areas. Firstly, Basket 8 comprises newer projects and therefore "is better marked-to-market in terms of the residential amenity levels expected of non-landed market today".

Secondly, Basket 8 does not remove the earlier projects that were completed between October 2003 and September 2005, hence increasing both the number of price signals for computing the NUS SRPI suite and the coverage of non-landed private residential market.

In Basket 8, both the number and proportion of small units have also increased markedly in both the central and non-central regions, NUS said. Small units represent about 31 per cent of projects or about twice the number in the previous basket.

Based on the new basket, small units of 47 sqm (506 square feet) or less, as well as units (excluding small units) in the non-central region rose 0.6 and 0.5 per cent respectively in January, recovering from their December declines of 0.3 and 0.6 per cent.

But units in the central region (excluding small units) slipped a further 0.5 per cent in January, after a revised 0.8 per cent fall in December. NUS SRPI December figures were based on Basket 7.