Property developers facing better year ahead in 2021

A FEARED slump in the private property market did not quite materialise in 2020; and with the ongoing momentum in the sales of private homes, things may have turned a corner for developers heading into 2021.

Despite the pandemic, the Private Residential Property Index rose 2.2 per cent for 2020 as a whole after notching a quarter-on-quarter gain of 2.1 per cent in Q4 2020, based on the Urban Redevelopment Authority's (URA) latest flash estimate.

This came even as the pandemic sent the economy spiralling into a recession, with gross domestic product (GDP) contracting 5.8 per cent last year, advance estimates from the Ministry of Trade and Industry showed.