Private home prices down 0.7% in Q1: URA

PRIVATE residential property prices slipped 0.7 per cent in the first quarter, from the fourth quarter of last year, flash estimates from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) released on Friday show.

This followed a 0.5 per cent decline in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The drag in the first quarter came from suburban and city fringe areas, with the Outside Central Region registering a 0.9 per cent price fall and the Rest of Central Region marking a 0.4 per cent decline.

Prices of non-landed private residential properties in the Core Central Region, however, rose 0.4 per cent.

The flash estimates are compiled based on transaction prices given in contracts submitted for stamp duty payment and data on new units sold by developers up till mid-March. The statistics will be updated four weeks later when URA releases the full real estate statistics for the first quarter.