The private residential prices in the island registered the lowest quarterly decline in more than 2 years for the last quarter of 2015. The drop of 0.5% in the URA’s flash estimates coincides with the full year drop of 3.7% in private home prices over the past year. In 214 the price drop is at 4%. After 9 consecutive quarters of price decline, the island’s private home prices dropped 8.4% from the peak of 3rd quarter of 2013.

HDB prices however registered a 0.2% rise over the last quarter. This leads to a contraction of prices for the whole year to be 1.5%. If this stabilisation trend continues for the HDB resale prices, the HDB upgraders will be more confident to move to private suburban market, thus possibly even lead a slight recovery in the sector.

Some property consultants has indicated that this is a sign for further soft landing of prices and thus justify the cooling measures implemented so far. Others feel that the market has found a new equilibrium and thus the cooling measures may take a longer time before they are being lifted.

Based on the URA/HDB flash estimates the Q4 price/year-on-year movements are as follows:

Prices of non landed private homes
1. Core Central Region (CCR) -0.4%/ -2.6%
2. Rest of Central Region (RCR) -1.6% / -3.9%
3. Outside Central Region (OCR) -1.6% / -3.7%

Segments
1. All residential -0.5% / -3.7%
2. Landed property -2.1% / -4.4%

For HDB the statistics are as below
Price movement +0.2% / -1.5%