Cooling measures to stay in place for now

PROPERTY developers and consultants didn't get the rolling back or tweaking of property cooling measures they were hoping for but took things in their stride, after Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam declared: "Given the run-up in prices in the last four years, it is too early to start relaxing our measures. The government will continue to monitor the property market in the coming quarters and adjust our measures when necessary.

"We are not engineering a hard landing. But neither are we able to eliminate cycles in the property market, with upswings in prices in some years followed by corrections."

Property industry players had called for a scaleback of the seven rounds of property cooling since 2009, which rolled out measures such as the seller's stamp duty (to discourage short-term trading in property), additional buyer's stamp duty (targeting property investors and foreign buyers) and lower loan-to-value limits for those taking their second or subsequent home mortgages.