Why Singapore property investment sales dropped 27% to S$5.4b in Q4

There’s a number of factors apart from the holiday season effect.

According to a recent report from Savills, the investment sales figures in Singapore’s real estate market for Q4/2023 came in at S$5.4 billion, falling 26.6% from the S$7.3 billion achieved in the previous quarter. 

“Besides the holiday season effect, other reasons for the sharp turnaround include weaker investor sentiment due to continuing uncertainties over global economic growth, the high interest rate environment, a mismatch of price expectations between buyers and sellers and rigorous due diligence checks to prevent money laundering,” the report added.

Here’s more from Savills:

The public sector contributed 54.5% of the quarter’s total investment value with six land parcels under the GLS Programme awarded for a total value of around S$2.9 billion. Accounting for the remaining 45.5% of total investment value, the private sector recorded S$2.4 billion of transactions in the quarter. This was 22.7% lower than the S$3.2 billion in Q3/2023. 

In terms of sales value by sector, the residential sector made up 64.4% of total investment sales. Next came commercial and then industrial with 30.4% and 5.2% of the total investment sales value respectively. 

For the whole of 2023, investment sales totalled S$20.5 billion, down 26.8% from S$28.0 billion in 2022. This was within our earlier full-year expectation of S$19.0 billion to S$21.0 billion.