Heightening development risks will spook developers to lower home prices, say analysts

Their five-year project-completion deadlines are fast approaching.

Property developers may have to wait a little longer to get a breather. As their plea for extended deadlines were rejected, analysts say they may have to start lowering their asking prices to thrive in the challenging market.

According to analysts from Maybank Kim Eng, developers are getting worried about paying the duty with interests for their lands if they fail to sell all their units within five years.

“Using GLS sites sold since the implementation of ABSD, we estimate that 32 homes with project deadlines in 4Q16 remain unsold. This rises above 3,000 units for those with deadlines in 2017. As such, we expect further downward pressure on home prices, with the biggest downside for the mass market,” Maybank Kim Eng said.

Meanwhile, this lowering could potentially set the stage for a potential lifting of cooling measures in 2016.

“While a change in measures may not necessarily arrest home-price declines, we believe it could trigger a rebound in sales volume, removing a key overhang for developers,” they added.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia