Singapore's private home prices see first fall in nearly 2 years last Q4

Singapore's private home prices fell by 0.9 percent in the 4th quarter of last year, representing the first decline since the first quarter of 2012, the city state' s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) released the data on Friday. The dip in prices was slightly sharper than the 0.8 percent drop based on preliminary data announced on January 2. For the whole year of 2013, prices of private residential properties increased by 1.1 percent, much lower than the 2.8 percent increase in 2012. According to the authorities' data, the price of private homes in suburban region declined by 1 percent in last Q4. It was the first drop since the Q2 of 2009, and the decline was also higher than the earlier estimate at 0.6 percent in early of January. Prices of non-landed properties in the core central region further declined by 2.1 percent in Q4, after the 0.3 percent decrease in the previous quarter. It was slightly slower than the 2.2 percent fall estimated earlier. For the region of the city fringe, on the contrary, the private home prices still climbed by 0.4 percent in Q4, after registering a 0.9 percent decline in the previous quarter. For the year 2013 as a whole, prices in core central region and city fringe decreased by 1.9 percent and 0.1 percent respectively, while prices in suburban region increased by 6.5 percent. According to the URA, developers launched 2,631 uncompleted private residential units for sale in Q4, fewer than the 3,313 units in previous quarter. For the full-year 2013, developers totally launched 15,885 uncompleted units for sale.