2019's healthy home sales mask uneven showing for different projects

Singapore

DEVELOPERS are heading towards healthy home sales this year, with analysts expecting them to move more than 9,000 private homes, surpassing last year's figure of 8,795 units.

Beneath the positive headline numbers, though, is a picture of uneven sales performance among residential projects launched in the first nine months of this year, based on The Business Times' analysis of URA Realis data as of Oct 4. (See table on Page 2)

On the whole, given the high land prices developers paid in the past, most new residential project launches this year have had optimistic per square foot (psf) prices, often at benchmark levels for their respective locales.

This has resulted in either a muted response from buyers, or a seemingly encouraging response in the month of launch, followed by gradual sales thereafter,…