Singapore's private home prices up 0.6 pct in Q3

Singapore's private home prices continued to rise by 0.6 percent during the third quarter till the end of September, following the quarterly rise of 0.4 percent in the second quarter and the 0.1 percent drop in the first quarter. It is the highest rate of increase this year and is also a bit higher than the flash estimate of 0.5 percent increase released earlier this month, the city-state's Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) announced Monday here. The price increase was mainly due to the mass market segment that outside central region where prices rose 1 percent, compared with the 0.5 percent increase in Q2. It is the same with the flash estimate. Prices in rest of central region, however, saw an even higher increase of 0.8 percent than the estimate of 0.7 percent in Q3, while prices of non-landed private residential properties in core central region rose in a more moderate rate of 0.1 percent compared with the estimate of 0.2 percent increase. The statistics also showed that there were 5,916 private residential units, including both completed and uncompleted, sold in Q3, which were higher than that of 5,402 units in Q2. On the resale market, the total transaction volume of Q3 registered as 3, 370 units, lower than that of 3,830 units in Q2. Besides, the rentals of private residential properties increased by 0.9 percent in Q3, compared with 0.3 percent in the previous quarter. The rising prices in housing market have long been the main drive for the country's high inflation rate. Earlier statistics showed that the consumer price inflation in Singapore rose to 4.7 percent in September, higher than the 3.9 percent for August. Its central bank said earlier that, out of market's expectation, they would maintain its policy stance of slow and gradual appreciation of the Singapore dollar against a basket of foreign currencies to mitigate inflationary pressure.