With the analysis of the last district completed earlier this week, I thought it is timely for me to pen down some of the key insights or general trends I see across all the various districts to allow the readers to have some quick answers to the common questions they have with regards to private condominium in Singapore.
Before I get started, please take a look at the following tools which I have created for property analysis if you haven't as I believe they will be very useful for anybody who's looking to buy/invest private condominium in Singapore.
(In this guide, you will find the link to the detailed analysis for each of the districts. In the analysis for each district, you can find useful information such as average price, median price etc for each of the private condominium projects)
(In this map, you will see in a glance important information of any private condominium such as average $psf, no of transactions in the past 3 years while navigating around your area of interest. You can even filter districts or tenures for the results.)
Now, back to the main topic. Here are the key takeaways.
(Please take note that the answers to the below questions are based on URA caveats for the period from May 2017 to May 2020. The exact months used for the individual district analysis in Singapore Private Condominium Guide might be slightly different as they are all analyzed at different period in the past 5 months. D6 (City Hall, High Street, North Bridge Road) and D24 (Kranji, Lim Chu Kang, Tengah) are excluded as they have very little/no private condominium transactions in the past 3 years.)
1) What is the average $psf transacted for each of the districts over the past 3 years?
Here is the table depicting the average $psf transacted in each of the districts (ranked from highest to lowest).
D7 (Bencoolen Road, Bugis, Rochor) actually tops the list! That's actually because part of this RCR district is Bugis which can be actually deemed as part of CCR. PropertyGuru predicts that Bugis will overtake Orchard as Singapore's new prime residential district. That prediction is definitely on track as the average $psf transacted for D7 (Bencoolen Road, Bugis, Rochor) has already overtaken those of D9 (Orchard, River Valley).
2) Which district has the highest count of transactions over the past 3 years?
Here is the ranking table for all the districts in Singapore in terms of transaction count (ranked from highest to lowest).
D19 (Hougang, Punggol, Seng Kang) is the leader in this segment by a mile. There has been a huge number of new condominium projects in this area in the recent years and that has probably contributed to the high count. Seems like this district is bustling.
At the bottom of the table, we have D25 (Admiralty, Woodlands) with less than 300 transactions in the past 3 years. This is probably due to a lack of private condominium projects in this district as compared against many other districts.
3) Which district has the highest $psf growth over the past 3 years?
Here is the ranking table for all the districts in Singapore in terms of $psf growth over the past 3 years (ranked from highest to lowest).
*The $psf growth is based on the gradient of the trend line in the scatter plots ($psf against dates) obtained for each of the districts (refer to any of the districts in Singapore Private Condominium Guide for a better understanding) The greater the gradient is, the higher the $psf growth is. This analytical technique is also commonly shown in each of the detailed analysis I have done for each of the districts.
Some of the districts share the same ranking as their performances in terms of $psf growth over the past 3 years are very similar.
The top of the list is surprising, isn't it? District 17 (Changi, Loyang, Pasir Ris) actually tops the list. Recent new projects like The Jovell and Parc Komo have certainly pumped up the transacted $psf values in this district.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have areas along the North South MRT line such as D27 (Admiralty, Sembawang, Yishun), D25 (Admiralty, Woodlands) and D22 (Boon Lay, Jurong and Tuas) which didn't fare very well over the past 3 years. In fact, the $psf growth in these districts are the only negative ones among all the districts analyzed.
An interesting observation here is also that RCR and OCR districts tend to have higher $psf growth as compared to the CCR districts. None of the top 10 districts for $psf is actually a CCR district (though technically parts of D7 (Bencoolen Road, Bugis, Rochor) and D3 (Tiong Bahru, Alexandra, Queenstown) can actually be considered as part of CCR) . So some food for thought here if you are wondering which region (CCR, RCR, OCR) is best for price appreciation.
4) Do freehold condominium perform better against leasehold condominium in terms of $psf growth?
In all of the 26 districts I have analyzed, 4 of the districts [ D25 (Admiralty, Woodlands), D22 (Boon Lay, Jurong, Tuas), D1 (Chinatown, Havelock Road, Raffles Place) and D7 (Bencoolen Road, Bugis, Rochor)] have very little or no freehold transactions in the past 3 years and are hence removed.
In the remaining 22 districts, freehold perform better than or the same as leasehold properties in exactly half of these districts. Hence, I don't think there is a good conclusion here on whether freehold perform better against leasehold properties. But bear in mind that I'm limited by the amount of data I have here which is only the recent 3 years of transactional data from the URA caveats. If we could have data for a longer period of time, we might be able to derive to some conclusions here.
Anyway, here are the 11 districts where the freehold perform better than or the same as leasehold properties over the past 3 years if you are interested to know.
5) Which apartment size performs the best in terms of $psf growth?
In the detailed analysis which I done for each of the districts, I typically divide the apartment sizes into 4 categories.
Less than 500 sqft- Typically studio or 1 bedder
Between 500 and 1000 sqft- Typically 2 bedders
Between 1000 and 1500 sqft- Typically 3 bedders
More than 1500 sqft- Typically penthouses
The key objective of doing so is to better understand which apartment size/no of bedders performs the best in terms of $psf growth in each of the districts.
I was hoping to see a clear winner in one of these 4 categories after analyzing all the districts. Interestingly, there isn't!
The "best performing" apartment size varies across the districts. The only apartment size which edges out slightly is the 2 bedders (between 500 and 1000 sqft). 8 of the 26 districts have this apartment size performing the best in terms of $psf growth over the past 3 years.
While there isn't a clear winner on the apartment sizes, I noticed a unique trend where certain apartment sizes tend to have poor results (negative $psf growth) in a noticeable number of districts. They are the studio/1 bedder (less than 500 sqft) and penthouses (more than 1500 sqft).
For the studio/1 bedder (less than 500 sqft), here are the districts where apartments of such sizes have negative $psf growth over the past 3 years.
For the penthouses (more than 1500 sqft), here are the districts where apartments of such sizes have negative $psf growth over the past 3 years.
These are generally relatable as apartments of extreme sizes tend to attract less buyers as compared to apartments of the "usual" sizes.
Hope you have enjoyed such property analysis thus far. I will be constantly adding in new insights from my data analysis or research in the blog.
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