LAST year was a good year for the Singapore residential property market. Based on the flash estimate of private home prices for the fourth quarter of 2021 by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), prices rose 10.6 per cent year-on-year and 5.0 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, private home prices are up 13.0 per cent.

But the party may soon be over amid increasing supply of homes and property cooling measures that kicked in on Dec 16, 2021, which included higher additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) rates for all individuals and entities except Singapore citizens and permanent residents buying their first home. 

Still, is there a need to turn the screws on how developers set prices of homes at new launches and the commission rates that developers pay sales agents so as to bolster the stability of the private home market?