Private home prices rise 0.6% in Q4 for full-year gain of 3.3%; rents up 1.9% from 2024
Annual price growth is at its slowest pace since 2020, even as new home sales climb past 10,000 units
[SINGAPORE] After years of rapid gains, Singapore’s private residential market appears to have flattened in 2025, with price growth easing to the low single digits even as transaction volumes hit a multi-year high.
Data released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Friday (Jan 23) showed that prices of private residential properties inched up 0.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The updated Q4 price index was a tad lower than the 0.7 per cent flash estimate by the agency earlier this month, and followed an increase of 0.9 per cent for the previous quarter.
For the full year, private home prices rose 3.3 per cent, the slowest pace of growth since 2020, noted PropNex chief executive Kelvin Fong. In comparison, prices rose 3.9 per cent in 2024, 6.8 per cent in 2023, 8.6 per cent in 2022 and 10.6 per cent in 2021.
Fong added: “That the robust sales in 2025 did not lead to rapid price spikes also reflects developers’ discipline in pricing units, and their focus on driving healthy take-up rates at launch with well-calibrated prices in a highly value-conscious market.”
Chia Siew Chuin, JLL’s head of residential research, research and consultancy for Singapore, said that price growth remained moderate despite strong buyer demand, particularly in the second half of the year.
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In the primary market, developers launched 2,632 private homes, excluding executive condos (ECs), in Q4, bringing the annual total to 11,482 units – nearly double the 6,647 units in 2024.
Around 2,940 units of these new homes were sold in Q4.
Although this was around 10 per cent lower than the third quarter’s 3,288 units, it lifted total new home sales for 2025 to 10,815 units, up from 6,469 units in 2024.
This marked the first time in four years that new home sales exceeded 10,000 units, underscoring the “deep-seated confidence and purchasing power that continues to support housing demand”, said Chia.
She added that this was aided by improved affordability from lower interest rates and a fresh pipeline of new developments.
Chia noted that 2025’s full-year tally was close to the annual average of 10,974 units sold from 2019 to 2021, before a series of cooling measures rolled out over the past few years.
These included higher additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) rates and a tightened total debt servicing ratio threshold in December 2021 and September 2022, followed by another ABSD hike in April 2023.
Chia explained: “Years of sustained economic growth have bolstered household liquidity, while intergenerational wealth transfers have further amplified purchasing capacity.”
Huttons Asia senior director of data analytics Lee Sze Teck, pointed out that more than 60 per cent of transactions were priced below S$2.5 million, though a growing share is now priced between S$2.5 million and S$5 million. This reflects rising wealth and a larger number of projects launched in the Core Central Region.
Holding steady
With new home sales at a high, unsold stock has fallen.
Tricia Song, research head for South-east Asia at CBRE, noted that unsold inventory of uncompleted private homes, excluding ECs, fell 12.7 per cent to 14,859 units in Q4, from 17,029 units in Q3.
Including completed units, total unsold inventory declined 12.8 per cent to 15,007 units in Q4 – well below the last peak of 37,799 units recorded in the first quarter of 2019.
The current level also represents less than two years’ supply, going by recent sales levels, Song added.
Amid the pickup in primary market demand, Newmark research head Wong Shanting pointed out that resale activity held firm with 3,529 transactions in Q4, down slightly from 3,881 units in Q3.
These deals accounted for 52.7 per cent of all transactions in Q4, roughly the same as in the prior three-month period.
Total resale transactions for the year rose to 14,622 units, from 14,053 units in 2024.
JLL’s Chia said that this consistency “highlights the resilience of the resale segment, which continues to serve as the bedrock of the housing market for genuine homebuyers”.
Resale prices rose 0.5 per cent in Q4, taking the full-year growth to 3.2 per cent in 2025. Huttons Asia’s Lee noted that this was slightly lower than the 3.5 per cent increase in 2024, and another signal of price stabilisation.
Sub-sale activity remained muted, with 1,055 transactions recorded in 2025, down from 1,428 in 2024. Sub-sales accounted for 6.7 per cent of all secondary deals.
A more restrictive seller’s stamp duty framework – recently extended to a longer holding period – has effectively curbed speculative activity, Chia noted.
On the rental front, URA’s overall index was down 0.5 per cent in Q4, after three straight quarters of growth. This brought rental growth to 1.9 per cent for 2025, reversing a 1.9 per cent correction in 2024 and similar to end-2023 levels, Song said.
The vacancy rate edged down to 6 per cent as at end-Q4, from 6.9 per cent in Q3.
The shift in rental momentum follows the completion of 2,018 private housing units, including ECs, in Q4, bringing the total number of completions in 2025 to 7,996 units.
PropNex’s Wong reckoned the market – with its slower price increases and recovering rents – may be entering a “Goldilocks” phase where it is “balanced and just right”.
In the coming year, 6,955 private homes, including ECs, are set to be completed. Another 10,021 units are expected to be ready in 2027, 10,701 units in 2028, and 13,028 units in 2029. Beyond that, nearly 16,000 completions are projected. Together, these make for 54,000 units in the pipeline.
New home sales are expected to normalise at between 8,000 and 10,000 units this year, with prices rising by up to 4 per cent.
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