Bookmark & Share
Inbound property investments in Singapore soared by 170 percent to US$2.3 billion (S$3.24 billion) in the first quarter of 2017 compared to US$838.2 million (S$1.18 billion) in the same period a year ago, according to data from Real Capital Analytics (RCA), reported The Business Times.
This is one of the city-state’s best performances in the Asia-Pacific, said Petra Blazkova, RCA’s Senior Director of analytics for the region.
“In the last couple of years, Singapore has been through fairly slow market growth on the rental income side. The economy was quite subdued, so investors were shying a little bit away from Singapore because they couldn’t foresee when the trend for growth would come.”
“I don’t necessarily see the strong rental growth appearing in the market as we speak right now, but somehow confidence has returned to the market, and I think it started with the first sale of Asia Square Tower One last year.”
The top deals for Q1 2017 include the sale of the PwC office building for S$747 million by DBS Group to Manulife Financial, CapitaLand’s S$412 million disposal of the Nassim residential project to Kheng Leong, and the S$350 million sale of a 70 percent stake in the TripleOne Somerset office building to Shun Tak by a consortium led by Perennial Real Estate.
As of April 2017, Singapore recorded about 18 transactions with a combined value of US$5.3 billion (S$7.47 billion). At this rate, it seems on track to achieve record volumes in 2017, noted Blazkova,
“That’s quite a high number for a relatively small market like Singapore.”
On the other hand, most other countries in Asia-Pacific registered a drop in property investment volumes, including China, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. This is due to a dearth of investment-grade properties, while some owners are opting to keep their assets, RCA explained.
In total, property transactions in the region declined by 21 percent year-on-year to US$22.6 billion (S$31.85 billion) in Q1 2017, the weakest level since Q2 2010.
This article was edited by Denise Djong.
Related Articles:
Singapore real estate investment sales up 67.4% in Q1
Office market to bottom by end 2017: report