AMERICANS have overtaken mainland Chinese buyers as the top foreign buyers of Singapore condominiums, OrangeTee said in a report released on Thursday (Jul 20).

In absolute terms, non-permanent resident (PR) citizens from the US purchased 56 such non-landed homes in the second quarter, marginally more than the 51 units bought by non-PR mainland Chinese buyers – who have been in the top spot since 2017.

This came as the total number of foreign purchases in Q2 fell after the Singapore government doubled the Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty (ABSD) payable for foreigners to 60 per cent in April.

Due to free trade agreements, US nationals are accorded the same stamp duty treatment as Singapore citizens. Nationals and permanent residents of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland also get the same treatment.

OrangeTee noted that the proportion of buyers from the US purchasing condominium units rose to 27.3 per cent in Q2, from 23.8 per cent in Q1.

In contrast, the proportion of non-landed homes bought by non-PR citizens from mainland China fell by a bigger margin to 24.9 per cent from 41.1 per cent over the same period, after the property cooling measure.

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“Americans may continue to be among the top foreign buyers here, since they are less affected by the increased ABSD,” said Christine Sun, senior vice-president of research and analytics at OrangeTee.

She added that other foreigners may purchase properties after becoming citizens or PRs as they can pay less ABSD, or they may switch to buying non-residential properties.

Foreigners had bought fewer non-landed homes, excluding executive condominiums. Only 205 such transactions took place, 22.6 per cent less than the 265 units recorded in Q1.

This is the lowest transaction volume since 145 units were transacted in Q1 2022 after the implementation of similar cooling measures in December 2021, which increased ABSD rates and tightened the total debt servicing ratio threshold.

The proportion of foreign purchases had also fallen to 4.2 per cent in Q2, from 6.9 per cent in Q1.

Sun believes that buying activities may persist in the second half of this year as new projects are launched, barring a global economic slowdown or unforeseen circumstances.

“With more housing supply coming onstream, we estimate that overall property prices will continue stabilising,” said Sun.

She notes that the full-year growth could be slower at about 4 per cent to 6 per cent, compared with 8.6 per cent last year and 10.6 per cent in 2021.