More active resale HDB market in the making

WITH an estimated 82 per cent of Singapore's resident population living in more than a million Housing Development Board (HDB) flats, the performance of the HDB resale market naturally becomes a concern to the majority of the population.

Since peaking more than two years ago, prices of HDB resale flats have been decreasing steadily.

Based on the board's third quarter flash estimate, the HDB resale price index has eased by a total of 9.9 per cent over nine straight quarters - from a high of 149.4 in Q2 2013 to 134.6.

In Q3 2015 itself, the index dipped 0.3 per cent from the previous quarter, marking the smallest decrease in the nine quarters of price corrections.

A rosier picture has emerged on the transactions front, with a 27.8 per cent increase in the number of resale flat applications to 5,286 in Q2 2015 from 4,135 in the preceding quarter. Even when compared to the same period last year, there was a marked 20.4 per cent increase in the number of transactions from 4,389 in Q2 2014. However, this is a far cry from the numbers recorded in 2009, when transaction volumes used to hit …